Dr. Cherly Hall, Texas Psychological Association (TPA) Board Trustee, released an important message that asks psychologists to contact their Representative and request passage of H.R. 3961. This bill prevents sizable scheduled cuts to provider payments. Dr. Hall points out that changes in Medicare not only affect Medicare providers, but also private pay insurance collections. The original announcement is po ...

As we [American Psychological Association Practice Organization] reported last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have announced changes in 2010 to Medicare's payments for the practice expense portion of numerous services including those commonly billed by psychologists. As you may recall from our July 15 Information Alert, CMS's proposed rule would have resulted in an expected reduc ...

You can now download President Barack Obama's healthcare bill at The Behavioral Medicine Report. At over a 1000 pages, prepare yourself for quite a read. I have debated for some time now whether to post my thoughts on the current state of healthcare and health insurance, but I have decided to not comment on this socialized medicine approach to health insurance at the present time. I simply want to make the ...

On Friday, three key House committees, the Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and Labor Committees, released their joint draft of health care reform legislation, which includes Medicare provisions. I [Jeff Cook, J.D.] am pleased to inform you that the committees have included psychology's top Medicare priority - a two-year extension of the 5% psychology payment restoration previously passed ...

The American Psychological Association (APA) Insurance Trust recently released an article/advisory that ALL healthcare providers need to read, regardless if you accept Medicare or not. This amazing story details how a private pay (only) psychologist landed himself in a legal and financial nightmare with Medicare. I find these developments to be extremely frustrating as a future clinician that intends to off ...