medicare

Jonathan Blum appreciates your concerns. He really does.

But the competitive bidding program is moving forward.

A brave statement to make at a luncheon populated by about 300 HME providers with knives.

I had a hot dog near the Lincoln monument this afternoon and discovered a new use for walking canes. A woman used hers to fend off a particularly aggressive squirrel who tried to join her for lunch today.

I just got off the phone with a very-relieved Brad Watkins, a provider in Oregon who has been battling the NSC to get his billing number reinstated.

What's going on over at the NSC (Not Synergistic with CMS)? We ran a story last month about providers whose Medicare supplier numbers have been in limbo for months.

Did you listen to CMS' Open Door Forum last week? I did.

Do you remember how CMS officials said they had added 220 NPIs to the PECOS enrollment records? And how callers questioned that tiny number? And how CMS officials stood by it?

Sens. Max Baucus and Charles Grassley sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius yesterday asking her to cut some slack for pharmacies that haven't been accredited yet. The deadline for pharmacies passed Jan.

This statement caught my eye:

I supported national health insurance until I became Medicare-eligible this year.

At this time of year we editors like to cull top 10 lists. On this last day of 2009 I perused our stats to see what the top story was for specialty providers.

This one's from the kind of interesting file. The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) and RxPatrol, which tracks pharmacy crimes, recently released a 10-minute training video for pharmacy staff.