Practice Management Alert

Plus, Medicare may go broke in 2024 according to report.

On May 25, Peter Shumlin, governor of Vermont, signed a bill he said will create "the first single payer system in America."

"The legislation sets up a framework for developing an implementation plan for Green Mountain Care, a universal, unified health care system," according to vtdigger.org. "The bill creates a five-member board that will oversee the development of a benefits package, a reimbursement system for doctors and hospitals, and afinancing system to support the universal health care plan." Earlier in May, both the House and Senate in Vermont passed the bill (H.202). According to information about the legislation on the MVP Healthcare Web site, the state is looking to implement the single-payer system in 2014 and the first pilot program will begin by January 2012. Stay tuned to Medical Office Billing & Collections Alert for more information as H.202 legislation and implementation develops.

Medicare Part A spending is growing faster than taxes are coming in to pay for the program, and the Part A coffers will be empty by 2024 unless the government takes action, according to the "2011 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds," which was published on May 13.

Good news: Part B and Part D accounts "are adequately financed under current law, since premium and general revenue income are reset each year to match the expected costs," the report notes. CMS reps were quick to point out that changes implemented by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed the Medicare program to stay funded eight years longer than previously expected. Prior calculations suggested that without the ACA, the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund would have gone broke in just five years, in 2016. "This report shows that without the Affordable Care Act, the outlook for the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund today would be much worse, said CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, MD in a May 13 statement. "CMS is implementing critical reforms to improve care and reduce costs and improve the overall health of Medicare's beneficiaries and the Trust Fund."

To read the complete Trustees' Report, visit www.cms.gov/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2011.pdf.