CAPITAL CAPSULES

Goodbye HCFA, hello CMS

HCFA is dead—long live CMS. Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health & Human Services, has replaced the name of the Health Care Financing Administration with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS.

The revamped agency will consist of three centers: Medicare Management to oversee traditional fee-for-service Medicare; Beneficiary Choices to focus on Medicare plus Choice, Medicare Select, and Medigap coverage options; and Medicaid & State Operations to handle programs administered by the states and partially funded by the federal government. Thompson said the renaming and reorganizing are part of a series of reforms to make the agency "more responsive to the patients and providers it serves."

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