Sightings

Q: Does the law cut spending on Medicare? A: Medicare spending will continue to expand as increasing numbers of baby boomers reach 65. The law does cut the expected growth of Medicare spending by about $716 billion over the next decade. Those cuts are made by lowering reimbursements to nursing homes, hospitals, home health agencies and other providers. It also cuts payments to Medicare Advantage plans to bring those payments closer to what Medicare pays for care for beneficiaries enrolled in the traditional fee-for-service plan. more »

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced that 19 companies had agreed to cease their practice of writing fake online reviews for businesses and to pay more than $350,000 in penalties. "Operation Clean Turf," a year-long undercover investiga… more »

A bill to remove barriers to the adoption of children in foster care through reauthorization and improvement of the adoption incentives program, and for other purposes; A bill to enhance pre- and post-adoptive support services; A bill to improve outcomes for youth at risk for sex trafficking, and other purposes. A bill to extend the adoption incentive payments program to incentive payments for foster child exits to reunification, adoption, and guardianship, and for other purposes. more »

In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year. Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says. more »