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Democratic efforts to pass a health reform bill lumbers on in Congress, with a key vote taking place this Saturday. The Senate will vote on whether or not it'll take up the latest version of the health reform bill, which Senate Democrats recently finished tweaking. In plain English, the Senate vote this weekend isn't about whether to pass the bill or not, it's to decide whether to even consider it for debate.

The House approved a bill to kill Medicare's Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, HR 3961, by a 243-183 vote. The main question now is what's next? It's headed to the Senate, where a similar SGR bill failed get enough votes last month. The Senate might not act on the bill and just let it die.

CMS will no longer recognize the code Q2024 (Bevacizumab, or Avastin) for payment of nonoutpatient hospital claims, the agency announced.  The code will be deleted from Medicare's Average Sales Price (ASP) file starting Jan. 1. CMS wants you to return to previous reporting practices for "small intraocular doses" of the cancer fighting drug.

The AMA is again pushing for federal lawmakers to pass a bill that eliminates the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula from calculating Medicare payments for physicians. A vote on the "doc fix" bill HR 3691 might happen in the House this week, according to published reports.

The latest RAC target signals a need to check claims for global procedures.

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