Millions of Medicare patients would be spared monthly premium increases next year under a bill passed by the House yesterday. It voted 406-18 to eliminate all premium increases for Medicare Part B, which provides coverage for doctor’s visits. The bill now goes to the Senate, where the Finance Committee is expected to take it up soon, though no hearings were scheduled.

As I read C. Burke King’s Sunday Commentary last week—“Government Health Plan Would Hurt Quality, Innovation, Choice”—I wondered what health care system he had been living in until I glanced at the bottom line and realized he is the president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. King asserts that the extension of a government plan, such as Medicare for all Americans, would hurt quality, innovation, and choice. After 29 years practicing family medicine, I will have to call him on these claims. His fear is that “a government plan would destabilize the market, increase cost of private coverage, and reduce quality of care,“ and that “private insurers would not be able to compete on an un-level playing field.“

The Obama administration yesterday placed new curbs on private insurance plans that are popular with seniors getting Medicare but have been criticized for marketing abuses and high costs to the government. Medicare officials said the changes include winnowing the number of versions of a plan that insurers can offer, protecting patients with chronic diseases from excessive co-payments and banning a practice by some plans that can add even more to the costs of brand-name drugs.

An Ohio businessman faces up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty in Lynchburg yesterday to conning customers, many of them elderly, into buying wheelchairs by making them think they were purchasing motorized scooters. Michael Cowen, head of Active Solutions of Worthington, Ohio, also agreed to forfeit $2.5 million, along with four vans, a truck and a 2003 BMW. The government has already seized $1.8 million from him. Cowen pleaded guilty to two charges, conspiracy and health-care fraud, in U.S. District Court in Lynchburg.

An Ohio businessman faces up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty in Lynchburg yesterday to conning customers, many of them elderly, into buying wheelchairs by making them think they were purchasing motorized scooters. Michael Cowen, head of Active Solutions of Worthington, Ohio, also agreed to forfeit $2.5 million, along with four vans, a truck and a 2003 BMW. The government has already seized $1.8 million from him. Cowen pleaded guilty to two charges, conspiracy and health-care fraud, in U.S. District Court in Lynchburg.

When Carol Lunceford got out of the hospital in September 2007, she knew she was going to need help to get around the house. Lunceford, 62, has lived with multiple sclerosis for 30 years, and one day she fell when her shower chair collapsed. She said she couldn’t find the strength to pull herself up from the bathtub and stayed there until relatives found her two days later.

A crush of people who waited until the last minute to inquire about changing their Medicare drug plans was keeping Linda Barnhart very busy yesterday. Medicare enrollees who want to change their Part D drug plan or add Part D drug coverage have until midnight today to do so. “This year was a little bit different,“ said Barnhart, manager of senior resources and advocacy for Senior Connections, The Capital Area Agency on Aging. “The first couple of years after the initial year where everybody had to make a choice, people tended to stay put.“

If new Medicare ratings are on the mark, more than half the adult nursing homes in the Richmond region are of below-average quality.