To meet growing demand for qualified managers in the increasingly complex health care industry, Excelsior College has introduced a health care management concentration in its online MBA program. It is collaboration between Excelsior’s Schools of Health Sciences and Business & Technology.Albany, NY (PRWEB) June 14, 2012 To meet growing demand for qualified managers in the increasingly complex ...

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Excelsior College Adds Health Care Management Concentration to its MBA Program

WASHINGTON -- Even as President Barack Obama's health care law expands coverage and transforms the way millions get medical care, it will have little effect on the total U.S. health care bill, a new government report finds.

Health care spending is expected to continue to surge over the next decade, hitting about $4.8 trillion in 2021, independent economists at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimate.

That is up from $2.8 trillion this year and will push health care spending to nearly 20 percent of the U.S. economy by the beginning of the next decade.

The new estimates -- the latest annual projection from the federal government -- undermine claims by critics that the law will dramatically drive up health care spending. At the same time, they underscore some of the law's limitations.

"The growth rate of national health spending is projected to be fairly similar with or without the Affordable Care Act," said Sean Keehan, lead author of the report.

Total health care spending over the next decade will be about 1 percent higher -- or about $478 billion -- as result of the law, even with the federal government spending hundreds of millions of dollars to guarantee nearly all Americans coverage for the first time.

After the law is fully implemented in 2014, total health care spending is expected to grow more slowly than it would without the law, the report said.

The economists estimate that 30 million more people will gain coverage

Many of those people are expected to qualify for federal subsidies that will be available to people making up to four times the federal poverty line, or $92,200, for a family of four.

But the new estimates also show how little the law will do to fundamentally change the trajectory of health care spending.

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U.S. health spending likely to keep rising, with or without Obama's plan

DeKALB Nicole Dispensa is heading toward a job in health care, but she believes her hometown of Stillman Valley lacks the resources to learn more about that career path.

Dispensa, 17, wants to pursue a career in clinical lab sciences. In a town with a population of about 1,100 people, its not easy to come by people in that profession.

Its hard to find people to shadow, at least for what I want to do, she said.

Dispensa is among 42 high school students from rural areas in 19 northern Illinois counties participating this week in the eighth Rural Health Careers Camp. The camps goal is to address the need for more health care providers in rural areas, said Vicki Weidenbacher-Hoper, coordinator for the National Center for Rural Health Professions in Rockford.

The camp includes CPR training, games such as Disease Detective, hands-on labs and talks with health care professionals.

Students also will compete in a race that includes a bedpan relay and laboratory matching game.

The three-day camp started Wednesday at Northern Illinois University. The camp is a partnership among NIUs School of Nursing and Health Studies, National Center for Rural Health Professions and the Northwestern Illinois Area Health Education Center.

Weidenbacher-Hoper said students from rural Illinois are more likely to return to areas near their hometowns to practice medicine.

In rural Illinois, theres a shortage of health professionals across the board, she said. We use the grow your own model. We want to invest in what we have in rural Illinois.

Matt Hunsaker, director of the rural medicine education program at the University of Illinois in Rockford, said students in rural areas typically have a harder time finding information about health care fields than students in urban areas.

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Camp addresses shortage in rural health providers

Acting Assistant Attorney General Stuart F. Delery told lawyers at the American Bar Associations ninth National Institute on the Civil False Claims Act and Qui Tam Enforcement that health-care prosecutions have worked for taxpayers.

"Since January 2009, the Civil Division, working with our partners in the U.S. Attorney offices, has recovered over $11.1 billion under the False Claims Act," Delery told the group last week, according to text of his speech. "Of this amount, more than $7.4 billion was recovered in health care fraud matters, with the largest recoveries coming from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. These are historic figures."

Qui tam is the abbreviated Latin phrase that translates, in practical terms, to whistle-blowers speaking up about what they perceive as malfeasance.

While whistle-blowers sometime benefit financially if a case gets all the way to conclusion, many have started out frustrated by attempts to fix the problem within their company.

The audience included attorneys who represent companies.

"Protecting taxpayer dollars is one of the Attorney Generals core priorities," Delery said. "This includes a commitment to increase our efforts to reduce fraud at the outset. Although the recoveries I discussed earlier reflect the impressive work of this department, it would be better if we did not need to bring these cases at all. The department is well aware of the fact that litigation can only plausibly reach a fraction of the fraud committed against U.S. Government programs which likewise makes the prevention of fraud a more potent tool for protecting the interests of the United States than efforts to undo the damage of completed schemes.

"That is why we continue to pursue non-monetary remedies and other measures to help prospectively reduce fraud. And it is why we want to engage with you and your clients to encourage self-reporting, discuss forward-looking compliance measures, and generally work cooperatively to try to eliminate fraud. Litigation to recover the costs of fraud is a far inferior option to preventing fraud in the first place."

Delery's full speech is here.

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Health-care fraud investigations paying dividends, Justice Department official says

Sharply higher premiums, deductibles, and a slimmer roster of doctors are options that employers are considering for employees if health reform is struck down, or partially overturned.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- How Corporate America will react if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark 2010 health care reform law is a big fat -- scary -- question mark.

And that leaves more than 160 million people who get their insurance directly through their employers in the dark.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule later this month -- maybe as soon as Monday. Industry experts say the justices could uphold the law, overturn it completely or overturn just some provisions.

In the meantime, the health insurance industry and consumers are bracing for a possible big change. Even though the law's main provisions don't kick in until 2014, several significant ones have already taken affect.

Earlier this week, a number of big health insurers, including two of the very largest -- UnitedHealthcare (UHC) and Humana (HUM, Fortune 500) -- committed to offering some provisions of health reform, such as coverage of adult dependents up to age 26, regardless of how the court rules.

But those commitments would only apply to the 15 million or so consumers who buy their insurance directly from insurers or work for businesses that do so.

A vastly larger pool of people get their insurance through employers that are "self insured," meaning they act just like an insurer. They create their own health care plans and set premiums and deductibles for their employees.

Premiums for employer-based coverage have already gone up 8% to 9% annually in the past few years.

And if the Supreme Court throws out the Affordable Care Act, there's a real risk that employees could see an "exponential jump" in premiums going forward, said Paul Keckley, executive director for Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.

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Employers' 'plan B' if health reform is axed