By Susan Jaffe KAISER HEALTH NEWS | December 23, 2014
This KHN story also ran in 
The federal office responsible for appeals for Medicare coverage has cut in half the waiting time for beneficiaries who are requesting a hearing before a judge.
The progress follows an announcement last January that officials were going to work through a crushing backlog by moving beneficiaries to the front of the line and suspending hearings on cases from hospitals, doctors and other providers for at least two years.
…Still, about 900,000 appeals are awaiting decisions, with most filed by hospitals, nursing homes, medical device suppliers and other health care providers, said Jason Green, OMHA’s program and policy director. The wait times for health providers’ cases have doubled since last year, and are nearly four times longer than the processing time for beneficiary appeals. [Continued in KHN] [Continued in Washington Post]