Value-based cost sharing, which encourages patients to use treatments, services and providers that deliver value, offers a pathway to high-value care, according to a review in the April issue of Health Affairs. The authors delved into the rationale for and types of value-based cost sharing before listing a few cautions.

The Obama administration’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2014, announced April 10, recommended closing the in-office ancillary services exception (IOASE) to the Stark law, which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said would save the government over $6 billion over 10 years.

A first look at President Obama’s proposed budget indicates that the POTUS has set his sights on the oft-reviled Stark loopholes.

Raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 years may epitomize the phrase penny wise and pound foolish, according to a National Public Radio feature.

Innovations in healthcare don’t necessarily reduce labor costs, as they often do in other industries, so reducing expenditures will require a particular focus on supporting the innovations that are labor-saving advances, according to a commentary article published in the April issue of Health Affairs.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ focus on multiple-procedure payment reductions (MPPRs) as a way to curb imaging growth is one of the greatest challenges faced by the specialty, according to an article published in the April issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

The financial burden imposed on society by treating cases of dementia rivals the costs associated with heart disease and cancer, according to a study published April 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and David Vitter (R-La.) have introduced the Diagnostic Imaging Services Access Protection Act (S. 623). The Senate bill corresponds with H.R. 846, recently introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. Pete Olson (R-Tex.), Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), John Barrow (D-Ga.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), and currently cosponsored by 72 bipartisan members of Congress.