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It's the second day of our 2009 Medicare Provider Enrollment Workshop and the hotel conference room is packed. Dennis Grindle, our speaker, cracks a joke about how frustrated practices are with CMS's unforgiving and sometimes unclear enrollment rules.

"As you can see, I'm not affiliated with CMS," he says. "That's why there's no bullet-proof screens up here around my podium."

 

President Barack Obama has "got nerve" to push Congress on health reform while he's "sightseeing in Paris," says a top Republican behind the reform effort. And he did it with Twitter.

 

Here is the latest update on the H1N1 influenza virus (or, the swine flu) outbreak from the CDC. The number of reported cases has reached roughly 8,000 cases, up from 5,000 a week ago. There are now 11 deaths linked to the swine flu. Subscribers can read our coverage, which includes Medicare billing advice, here and here.

A ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives is against the idea of giving the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) the authority to set Medicare rates for providers. MedPAC already makes recommendations to Congress to set rates, but its recommendations are nonbinding. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) says he's against increasing MedPAC's authority to completely set rates with Congress then voting them up or down, according to an article in USA Today June 5.

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