Thursday, March 28, 2013

Medicare has stopped paying for diagnostic tests

Are We Aware Yet? "The Obama Administration has stopped paying the bills from hundreds of health care companies, and it has nothing to do with sequestration.
"This is a story of bureaucratic mismanagement at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the harm it’s visiting on the diagnostic testing industry.
"At issue is the way that Medicare reimburses everyone from the big laboratory companies such as the Laboratory Corp of America (LH:NYSE) and Quest Diagnostics Inc. (DGX:NYSE), to the molecular diagnostic labs inside academic hospitals, and especially smaller firms that make proprietary tests used by doctors to more effectively target treatments to patients with conditions like cancer.” "

ObamaCare's effects are not just on patients and doctors, but are beginning to be felt in research and development:
Forbes Magazine states:  "This is having a profound impact on the market for developing new tests. Investors are shunning new investments as this gets sorted out. It says nothing about how these rates are ultimately going to be established, and whether the prices that the government assigns will reflect the value and innovation that these products offer."

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