http://www.carpaltunnel-cure.com/ Vita Ostrander, president of the 19 million-member American Assn. of Retired Persons, told the audience of mostly health care providers that “unbounded competition” for patients by doctors and hospitals could deteriorate the quality of care for everybody but especially for the poor, the old and the sick. Under one program, a hospital is paid a flat fee for a Medicare patient according to his diagnosis and regardless of how long the patient must be hospitalized. Under the previous system, hospitals were paid according to their costs of caring for Medicare patients. The new system, consequently, gives hospitals an incentive to treat patients as quickly as possible in order to reduce their expenses. Charles Baker, undersecretary of the U http://www.carpaltunnel-cure.com/. S. carpaltunnel-cure.com/ Department of Health and Human Services, said the new system of paying a flat fee for hospitalized Medicare patients-in effect for only 18 months at some hospitals-already has decreased the average length of stay from 10 days to nine days and is largely responsible for the growing solvency of the Medicare fund to pay hospital bills.