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President-elect Donald Trump is tapping Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) to be Secretary of Health and Human Services and Seema Verma as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to a release from the transition team. “Together, Chairman Price and Seema Verma are the dream team that will transform our healthcare system for the benefit of all Americans,” Trump said in a statement. Price, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, is a physician and a fierce opponent of Obamacare. “It is an honor to be nominated to serve our nation as Secretary of Health and Human Services....

Surgeons are speaking out against a Medicare proposal that would require them to use new billing codes to track their work in 10-minute increments during global surgical "packages" that span 10 days and 90 days, reports Medscape Medical News. The "packages" include preoperative and postoperative care as well as the procedure itself.

A CMS presentation to principals and counselors recommends kids are not referred to as boys and girls, but instead as scholars and students. DOCUMENT: CMS transgender student presentation Eliminating boy and girl references is one of several policies included in the CMS bully prevention regulations. One policy allows students to participate in extracurricular activities and overnight field trips based on their gender identity. A student who identifies as a girl would be allowed to participate in an "all-girl" overnight trip. Another policy says CMS must evaluate all gender-based activities and "maintain only those that have clear and sound pedagogical purpose."

Did a key official in the ObamaCare chain of command lie to Congress about funds recouped from state-based exchanges? Andy Slavitt, acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) testified in a House Energy and Commerce hearing last December that CMS had recouped over $200 million from state-based exchanges (SBEs) that have failed. Further investigation, however, shows that Slavitt’s claim was false — that the actual grant dollars recovered was about a tenth of what he claimed, and that even those dollars were not “recouped,” but just never transmitted in the first place. The executive summary lays...

The head of the agency that oversees President Barack Obama’s health-care legislation suggested it should not be held responsible for the 12 Obamacare health insurance co-ops that closed their doors to customers last year, according to prepared testimony he is scheduled to deliver today before the Senate Finance Committee. Andy Slavitt, acting administrator for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), was not apologetic in his testimony and accepted no personal responsibility for the co-op failures in 15 states, according to an advance copy of his testimony obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The closures sent millions of Americans...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released over 1,000 pages of new documents that show federal health care officials knew that the Obamacare website, when it launched in 2013, did not have the required "authorization to operate" (ATO) from agency information security officials. These documents, obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), come in two productions of records: a 143-page production and an 886-page production. The email records reveal that HHS officials had significant concerns about the security of the Healthcare.gov site leading up to its October 1, 2013, launch. Judicial Watch obtained the HHS documents...

AUSTIN, TX, October 27, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - Abortion workers sometimes like to look at the dissected body parts of the babies they have aborted, because their organs are "cute," an abortionist admits in a new video released by the Center for Medical Progress. "One of our POC [point of care] persons is really into organ development," Dr. Amna Dermish , an abortionist with Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas' Austin location, says in an undercover video released this morning. "She'll pull out, like, kidneys and heart. The heart we frequently see at nine weeks. She always looks for it." "Just like...

Planned Parenthood TX Abortion Apprentice Taught Partial-Birth Abortion to "Strive For" Intact Heads... AUSTIN, Oct. 27--The eleventh video release from The Center for Medical Progress in the ongoing Planned Parenthood baby parts scandal shows the abortion doctor for Planned Parenthood in Austin, TX, Dr. Amna Dermish, describing a partial-birth abortion procedure to terminate living, late-term fetuses which she hopes will yield intact fetal heads for brain harvesting.

The Obama administration is moving ahead with controversial new rules that require doctors to switch to electronic health records or face fees, resisting calls from both parties to delay implementation. Federal health officials said the final rules released Tuesday will make “significant changes" in the "meaningful use" electronic health records program, such as lowering the number of standards each provider must meet and allowing providers to apply for hardship exemptions. But the administration will not delay what it calls "Stage 3" of the records program, a move that is already angering vocal Republicans like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who have...

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced grant awards totaling $67 million to healthcare navigator efforts over the next three years. The awards come before the upcoming third year of Affordable Care Act enrollment starting November 1, 2015. CMS awarded funds to 100 organizations in 34 states that operate Federally Facilitated Marketplaces and State Partnership Marketplaces with three-year long Marketplace Navigator grants. …

Many of us cheered in January of this year when Marilyn Tavenner, the woman who headed the disastrous rollout of the healthcare.gov website, announced she’d be stepping down from her position as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). At the time, we weren’t too focused on who would be replacing her. Waiting in the wings was Andrew M. Slavitt, now Acting Medicare Chief, who had been biding his time as CMS’ deputy administrator since July 2014. Even though he’s been accused of possible cronyism and conflicts of interest, Andy Slavitt has a special brand of insurance...

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services secretly paid out over a billion dollars in improper hospital claims earlier last month, despite auditors labeling them unnecessary previously. The payments, which were quietly announced on June 1 by CMS, totaled $1.3 billion and involved 1,900 hospitals and 300,000 claims that had been already denied by CMS auditors on two different levels as medically unnecessary. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals settled hundreds of thousands of appeals for 68 cents on the dollar. The money used to cover the claims will be taken from the...

Marilyn Tavenner, the Obama administration official who presided over Obamacare’s worst debacles and most devious deceptions, has finally made an intelligent decision—she resigned. Tavenner ran the government bureaucracy responsible for the inept rollout of HealthCare.gov, the promulgation of phony PPACA enrollment figures, and the handout of legally dubious waivers to Democrat-friendly donors. And, when Congress subpoenaed her emails—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—she discovered that they had somehow been deleted. Having thus committed as many blunders as can be reasonably expected of any incompetent apparatchik, she announced last Friday that she will depart next month. The “news” media...

The leader of the agency charged with the ObamaCare rollout is stepping down after five years on the job. Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), announced her departure Friday, which will take effect next month. "It is with sadness and mixed emotions that I write to tell you that February will be my last month serving as the administrator for CMS," Tavenner wrote in an email to staff. Tavenner is leaving after five turbulent years overseeing the agency. Her tenure included the disastrous rollout of the government’s HealthCare.gov website as well as, most recently,...

If you like your health care plan, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has a Christmas surprise for you! When will this new present arrive? December 25th. In an ongoing effort to keep Obamacare numbers elevated, CMS has embarked on the next step of its government takeover of healthcare. It seems CMS is taking a page from Jonathan Gruber’s book; rather than allowing the “stupid” masses to make a decision on their own health plan, CMS has proposed a new rule that includes an overly reaching provision allowing CMS to re-enroll anyone who has not made the annual...

The White House has rejected a request to publicly disclose documents relating to the kinds of security software and computer systems behind the federal health care exchange website on the grounds that the information could "potentially" be used by hackers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied a Freedom of Information Act request made late last year by the Associated Press amid concerns that Republicans raised about the security of the website, which had technical glitches that prevented millions of people from signing up for insurance under ObamaCare. In denying access to the documents, including what's known as a...

It has been widely reported that the latest Obama administration official to delete emails requested by congressional investigators is Marilyn Tavenner, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Far less coverage, however, has been devoted to the ironic fact that Tavenner’s agency administers the Physician Payment Sunshine Act. The “Sunshine Act,” as it is generally known, is a provision of Obamacare meant to ensure that physicians conduct business transactions with complete transparency. In other words, the very bureaucrat whose emails have conveniently gone missing oversees the agency tasked with keeping your doctor and his business associates honest.

The revelation that Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Marilynn Tavenner did not retain her e-mails means that more than 20 witness in the Obama administration to lose or delete e-mails without notifying Congress, according to the top House investigator. “The Obama administration has lost or destroyed e-mails for more than 20 witnesses, and in each case, the loss wasn’t disclosed to the National Archives or Congress for months or years, in violation of federal law,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said of Tavenner’s lost e-mails. “It defies logic that so many senior...

Andrew Slavitt, a former executive at the technology company tasked with saving HealthCare.gov and current second-in-command at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was granted an ethics waiver by the Department of Health and Human Services to begin working with his former company immediately.The waiver was granted despite Republican lawmakers’ concerns about Slavitt’s potential conflict of interest. The Daily Signal revealed those concerns in a story yesterday.Slavitt, a former OptumInsight/QSSI group vice president, left the company last month to work as the principal deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Obamacare and HealthCare.gov. His...

The federal Obamacare marketplace was unable to verify nearly 3 million irregularities in the applications for enrollment, according to a new audit by the Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG). The audit, released Tuesday, found that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) resolved less than one percent of so-called “inconsistencies” related to the citizenship and residency status of Obamacare sign ups. “The Federal marketplace was not able to resolve inconsistencies related to: citizenship, status as a national, lawful presence, residency, family size, annual household income, and whether the applicant was eligible for minimum...