Tag: Medicare

Medicare and Alternative Medicine

Medicare is paying for nonsense.

/ November 15, 2022

Geriatric Preventive Medicine Appointments Covered by Medicare

Medicare offers free preventive medicine visits for those over 65: the Welcome to Medicare visit and the Annual Wellness Visit. Increased awareness of these benefits would improve health care, save taxpayer money, and reduce inequities of preventive medicine care for underserved populations.

/ November 8, 2022

Those Joe Namath Medicare Commercials

Joe Namath is promoting Medicare Advantage Plans on TV. Some of what he says is misleading. Here's the rest of the story.

/ November 9, 2021

H.R. 2654 forces Medicare to treat chiropractors and MDs as equals

Chiropractors are deceptively trying to sell H.R. 2654 as expanded Medicare coverage for musculoskeletal conditions. The bill actually mandates that Medicare treat chiropractors and medical doctors as equals, covering anything a chiropractors are authorized to do under their expansive state scope of practice laws.

/ June 17, 2021

Legislative Alchemy 2019: Acupuncturists score Medicare coverage and scope of practice expansion 

Through the magic of legislative alchemy, acupuncture has already scored some big wins in 2020, including Medicare coverage.

/ February 13, 2020

The DC wants to play PCP on your dime: H.R. 3654 forces Medicare to cover full chiropractic scope of practice

A bill pending before Congress (H.R. 3654) would expand Medicare coverage of chiropractic services to their full scope of practice under state laws. Chiropractors claim they are primary care physicians and want to force Medicare to pay them as such, just like an M.D. or D.O.

/ August 15, 2019

Medicare proposal covers acupuncture for back pain study participants: A prelude to full coverage?

Medicare coverage of acupuncture is under consideration. A new proposal would provide coverage to Medicare patients participating in studies of acupuncture for back pain. This research would be used in making a final decision.

/ July 18, 2019

Congress can easily end Medicare waste, fraud and abuse by chiropractors, saving billions

Yet another government report finds chiropractors are bilking Medicare billions for unnecessary services. A simple amendment to the Medicare law could end this, but will Congress act?

/ March 1, 2018

When doctors betray their patients and science-based medicine for money

We spend a lot of time on this blog discussing failures of the medical system. Usually, we such discussions occur in the context of how unscientific practices and even outright quackery have managed to infiltrate what should be science-based medicine (SBM) in the form of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or “integrative medicine,” in which the quackery of alternative medicine is...

/ August 12, 2013

New CMS Chief Donald Berwick: a Trojan Horse for Quackery?

NB: I posted this on Health Care Renewal a couple of days ago, figuring that Dr. Gorski’s post would suffice for the SBM readership (he and I had discussed the topic while at TAM8 last week). But Managing Editor Gorski has asked me to repost it here, which I’m happy to do. I am especially pleased to demonstrate that I am capable...

/ July 15, 2010