Death Panels Win Again - CMS to Reduce Advance Care Planning Coverage

Physicians have always been permitted to engage in advance care planning with their Medicare patients.  Indeed, they have been, and will continue to be able to, get reimbursed for such discussion (under several office visit CPT codes).  And ACP is still covered under the initial "Welcome to Medicare" visit.  But otherwise the reimbursement level is too low to incentivize this wanted and needed planning.  


Higher reimbursement was specifically covered under an early version of PPACA.  It was then specifically covered under Medicare regulations.  But now, the New York Times reports that coverage has been removed from the regulations too.