The Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, released a set of ratings yesterday for something rather more important than appliances: heart bypass surgery. Using data submitted to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS), the Consumers Union has graded various heart surgery groups using a three-star scale, similar to the way it rates radios, cameras and washing machines. It's a set of valuable public data that could serve as a model for expanding the Department of Health and Human Services' open government sites like Data.medicare.gov and the Community Health Data Initiative.
The heart surgery ratings are based on ...
Continue readingReid gets support from drug companies after preserving deal in health care reform
The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to wade into the 2010 midterm elections in support of those that helped to preserve... View Article
Continue readingOGD: A state-by-state look at Medicare payments
Over the last few years, hospitals in a few states have consistently received more money than others from Medicare in so-called "outlier payments" for inpatient services. These additional payments are handed out when a hospital takes on an unusually expensive case.
This takeaway comes from a quick review of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)' "Dashboard," a new online repository of spending data.
While the Dashboard is still in its beta version, and currently only has inpatient data (no home health or nursing home information, for example), a few points ... Continue reading
OGD: Future Medicare data looks promising
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services appear to be on to something with their promised new datasets. It's a leap for an agency whose previous offerings were a confusing mishmash of poorly-labeled files. If they continue to add granularity as they roll out more features, journalists could have a useful and innovative set of tools on their hands.
The “Dashboard” CMS intends to create, a demo of which is currently online, looks at Medicare spending on services. It's a good tool for quickly grasping the big picture; you can view data as a bubble chart, for example ...
Frontline: Obama’s Deal (April 13, 9PM)
PBS’ Frontline is running an investigation into the various negotiations and deals that led to the formation of the health... View Article
Continue readingLast Minute Drug Deal In Health Care Reform
Concessions to the pharmaceutical industry were added to the reconciliation bill after the industry agreed to provide additional savings requested... View Article
Continue readingHealth Sector Contributions by Party (1990-2008)
From the 1990 election cycle to the 2008 election cycle the health sector contributed over $829 million to candidates for... View Article
Continue readingAfter health care vote, members turn to earmark requests
[Note: this post has been corrected and revised]A
day after Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and ten other House members
compromised on their pro-life objections to the bill to deliver the
necessary yes-votes to pass health care reform, [Begin
new:]On Monday, March 22, House members turned from the contentious
vote on the trillion dollar national health insurance reform to focus
on more mundane matters--like requesting $84,400 for local geriatric
health care education programs.
That was one of more than 170 earmarks requested by Rep. Bart Stupak,
D-Mich., one of 11 lawmakers who were closely targeted by the
Democratic ...
Transparency, the Internet and the Affordable Care Act
Last year, I looked at the instances of the word “Internet” in the Senate version of the health care reform... View Article
Continue readingHealth Care Recap: Interest Group Power
I noticed this post last week from Matt Yglesias dinging Ezra Klein on the power of interest groups in light... View Article
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