Wow. You're actually concerned about death panels.
Okay, I'm game. Here's your fourth paragraph:
Quote:
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Nevertheless, for certain services, such as outpatient therapy services, Medicare's policies impose improvement standards that are inconsistent with the statute. The Medicare statute does not demand a showing of improvement to find services medically necessary or to cover treatment of an illness or injury. The statutory criterion for treatment of an illness or injury applies regardless of where the covered service is provided, be it in a skilled nursing facility, at home, or as an outpatient.
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(note--I hand-typed that because copying from the PDF was locked. Typos mine.)
So, taking that just at face value, there's a problem if the policies don't match the statute. One of them needs to be updated. For chronic care, improvement (measured in terms of "cure") is obviously an inappropriate standard. But I don't work there--I'm not going to presume I know more than the people making that assessment. I also don't think I know, just from reading this, what "improvement" means in this case. A subjective improvement in the quality of life could be seen with palliative care, and that might very well be an appropriate means to measure the necessity of medical treatment, in terminal cases.
I will say, whatever they do needs to comply with the laws defining Medicare, and if that's not happening, that's a problem. Either the law needs to be clarified, or the policy needs to be redefined.
Will, you've read the bill. Does it say anything about how treatment will be deemed appropriate/necessary?