Here is the article from the Wall Street Journal.
CMS will increase payments to hospitals by 0.2% which is far lower than the 2.7% increases in 2008 and 2009 and the 3.4% increase in 2007.
The inflationary increase was supposed to be 2.1% (which was lower due to the recession), however, CMS reduced this by 1.9% because their data indicates that hospitals are exaggerating how sick the patients are in order to get more money from Medicare. Medicare’s Actuary stated that the full decrease should have been 8.5%, however, CMS held back 6.6% of the cuts which could be applied in 2011 and 2012.
There is already some “cost shifting” being done by hospitals who get paid more for Private Insurance patients than for Medicare patients. This will likely increase that trend.
