In This Issue:

- Transparency Latest Weapon against Rising Health Care Costs

- Implementation of the Affordable Care Act

- Other Federal Regulatory Initiatives

- Other Congressional and State Initiatives

- Other Health Care News

- Upcoming Hearings and Markups

- Excerpt from Transparency Latest Weapon against Rising Health Care Costs:

Last Thursday, the American Medical Association (AMA) sent the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, a strongly-worded letter calling the recent release of Medicare physician payment data, “flawed” and failing to “convey useful and accurate data.” The AMA letter set forth a laundry list of complaints with the data and voiced concerns over physician requests to be able to fact-check or change the payment data before its public release. Additionally, they asked CMS to provide more disclaimers with the data to mitigate possible public backlash based on the raw data file. CMS doesn’t seem to be backing down so far as stakeholders, mainly from the physician community, continue to press the agency to make modifications to their transparency efforts.