Windfall for Massachusetts hospitals is called into question

WASHINGTON (AP) - an obscure provision hidden in the health care law has become a jackpot for Massachusetts hospitals, but officials in other States are annoyed because the money from their hospitals.

That might add Medicare windfall for Massachusetts $275 million a year - you fast, more than $1.4 billion over five years.

"If I can think of a better word than outrageous, I come up with it, would", said Steve Brenton, President of the Association of Wisconsin Hospital.

The message was buried in a Medicare regulation issued Monday and comes at a time when hospitals more cuts under the new federal debt deal face.

Even Medicare says it is anxious to create stationary payment rules of "Spoofing" great rewards for a State to the detriment of the others.

Hospitals in 41 States lose money because of a change. The biggest losers: New York, which is from $ 47.5 million.

Seven countries are making progress, though do not, as well as Massachusetts. A fraction of which received Massachusetts is runner up New Jersey, to $ 54 million.

President Barack Obama health care overhaul should lead to reforms in the Byzantine Medicare payment system. Critics say that this latest twist the big players to game system in a scramble for scarce increasing taxpayer dollars will encourage.

The health care law "it was a new era Herald based on innovations that focuses on the quality improvement and more efficient health care", said Herb Kuhn, President of the Missouri hospital. "What we see is innovation in the area of editing such as the payment system."

"It undermines any notion of fairness and justice in the development of prices," said Laurens Sartoris, President of the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association. "There is someone to go through the back door a TV broadcaster is special treatment in which preserved."

No back door maneuver involved, said the head of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, to defend the change.

"We do not have this as a manipulation of the rules is displayed", said Lynn Nicholas. She said that the higher payments helps Massachusetts hospitals amendment a Medicare above one to compensate for few years, the them hundreds of millions of dollars cost.

Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry, Co-sponsor of the provision in the health care law that benefited his State hospitals, was also firm.

"As (Medicare) five years ago the rules changed, won the rest of the country at our expense and Massachusetts took a big hit," Kerry said in a statement. "These new rules are only a few correction."

The American Hospital Association supported the change when debated the law. An official now says that hospitals do not understand what they got with the obscure provision.

The saga of how large Massachusetts reached might the textbook come directly from a lobbyist.

It goes back to a few years and turns and hilariously converts by the Medicare payment rules.

These rules are a factor that is used to adjust payments to hospitals for the difference in labour costs across the country. The adjustments to Medicare overall expenditure not each, result in automatic setting of potential winners and losers.

Top of that another rule says that the cost factor can be work for a hospital in an urban area of the State, less than for rural areas of that State.

Here comes a hospital on Nantucket, an island off the Massachusetts coast popular in leisure, in the image.

It served as a "critical access hospital," for their costs reimbursed by Medicare, the Government set as most hospitals a rich payment system will receive prizes.

Then, according to Kuhn, Nantucket convinced some mainland hospitals even rebooked. Mainland hospitals put it back after the same payment rules than that. What followed was a kind of domino effect.

On the Island labour costs are relatively high, she raised her rural costs in the entire State. In turn led to higher payments for urban hospitals. The island hospital was affiliated with a group of mainland hospitals, it suffered losses due to the transition could take.

The status change within the rules, said hospital Massachusetts Nicholas, the head of the Association. She said that the mainland hospitals subsidized financial loss for the island hospital.

"There was no direct payment from one to another," Nicholas said, adding that "part of a larger system which overall profitable was were, these losses could be included."

Medicare put up roadblocks to the change, and in 2008 it looked like the feds would win. Then, the health overhaul law turned the tables.

Medicare officials declined to comment. But in a different regulation this year, the agency concern with called it "Manipulation" their rules to, up to win 8 percent increase compared to a State at the expense of others.

The new payment rates effective October 1.

Other countries that come are out-ahead - Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut and New Hampshire for a variety of reasons - in Massachusetts and New Jersey. Hospitals in Wyoming break even. And hospitals were long paid Maryland under another system.

Any other State loses.

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