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Advance Care Planning Billing Rules Impede Equitable Access

Hospice News

On the patient side, Medicare beneficiaries face out-of-pocket costs when advance care planning is performed in any setting outside of an annual wellness visit. Across 150 different studies, white adults represented nearly two-thirds (65.1%) of roughly 800,000 individuals who had completed advance directives between 2011 and 2016.

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Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest by Physicians Creating the CDC Opioid Prescribing Guidelines: Bad Faith or Incompetence?

Pallimed

This unexpectedly and undesirably increased health insurers’ medication costs, including Medicare and Medicaid (22). Although this reduced Washington state’s Medicaid costs, it contributed “to the deaths of at least 2,173 people between 2003 and late 2011 (23, 25).” Seattle Times, December 21, 2011. 2011 Sep 6;155(5):325-8.

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