Funding

Long-term care providers and other caregivers — as well as significant other groups of people around the country — will be anxiously watching to see if the Senate and the House can get together on compromise funding legislation before the end of the year. At risk with the dawning of 2012 will be major funding cutbacks to Medicare doctors, expiration of the Medicare therapy exceptions process, among other items. An impasse was created after the Senate overwhelmingly passed a package that included a two-month extension to payroll tax cuts last weekend, but then the Republican-led House voted down the same measure. Millions of people will be affected one way or another.

The opening of the American Health Care Association's annual meeting took on a familiar air Monday afternoon in Las Vegas: A lot of proud retrospectives of a year gone by, prerequisite hand-wringing about the challenges ahead and numerous rally-the-troops messages from various leaders among the host group.

I haven't heard them pronounced this way yet, but long-term care providers might want to consider it when it comes to ACOs. Instead of spelling it out, as in A-C-O, say it phonetically, as in "Ache-O."

The issues facing Medicaid coverage in assisted living are fundamentally economic, not regulatory, according to at least one participant in Tuesday's roundtable discussion on assisted living held by the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

The long-term care industry would be the third-most impacted healthcare field if state Medicaid funding is converted into block grants, according to a new analysis from Bloomberg News.

The recession has seriously bruised states over the last year and they will continue to face fiscal difficulties, according to reports released last week by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers.

The U.S. House of Representatives officially released its version of healthcare reform legislation Tuesday. And, as requested by President Obama, the reform package should come to a vote by the August recess, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.