Key group now backs Obama's Medicare quality plan

[cbayer]

Source: AP

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press – 2 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — An influential medical group's change of heart is boosting President Barack Obama's plan to use Medicare to promote higher quality, less expensive care.

The American Medical Group Association represents premier organizations like the Mayo Clinic, the models for the proposed "accountable care organizations" in Obama's health care overhaul law. The networks of doctors and hospitals will collaborate to keep patients healthier.

Just a few months ago, the group said the administration's initial plan was too complex to work.

But in a letter to Medicare chief Don Berwick released Friday, the group said significant revisions changed the final blueprint for the better, and now it warrants serious consideration.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jFvvbvidxEXPC-43NIBgJYFB7jNg?docId=4d4d45ae532a4bfa83e18a50e0d9a329

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SoapBox]

2. Interesting...but

I'm always apprehensive when some of the "powers that be" say, "...Medicare to promote higher quality,
LESS expensive care."

From my own experiences with my company health insurance, when EVER there is anything like that (as is coming to our plan, regarding some medications, in 2012), it is simply code for, the patient gets screwed.

[cutlassmama]

3. that's the plan. Screw the elderly and disabled and keep more for the rich.

[thecrow]

8. Do you have a link for that, cutlassmama?

[CarmanK]

4. I AM SUSPICIOUS!! When the GROUPS agree with Obama, it

means that OBAMA compromised away our health care choices. Obama may be a good negotiator for the world but he is lousy when it comes to the 99%.

[cbayer]

5. The post deleted above was deleted in error. Our apologies - please

feel free to repost.

[pam4water]

6. The best and probably only way to improve medical quality is to let people pick there own doctors.

[roseBudd]

15. Doctors are people. Our perverse fee for service model rewards overuse

It also rewards incompetence

Google hospital readmissions

[russspeakeasy]

7. Follow the money..

[roseBudd]

9. We have to bend the cost curve on Medicare

That being said the idea is to study what works, what doesn't and establish best practices.

Then to incentivize better care, because screwing up is currently incentivized

Hospital re-admissions make more money for hospitals & doctors, but cost tax payers millions

Reward the providers that excel at better treatment outcomes, because perverse fee for service incentivized overuse.

One example is colonoscopies after age 75

Others are drugs that don't work

We are the reality based community

Decisions should be made based on evidence

Not wishful thinking

Terri Schiavo was wishful thinking

[Edweird]

10. "bend the cost curve" = BS double talk.

[roseBudd]

12. Pretending we can spend unlimited amounts is wishful thinking

We should not be paying for things that don't work

Like Medicare Advantage

the $500 million over 10 years ACA supposedly "stole" from Medicare, was actually over payments to Medicare Advantage providers like Humana

I thought democrats were pragmatic

Not wishful thinkers like the people who cling to the idea that tax cuts don't reduce revenue

[Edweird]

16. Taxes: heard of them?

[roseBudd]

17. Yeah, we still can not continue the unsustainabls trajectory of healthcare spending as a percentage

of GDP

We can not afford to have the terminally ill spend their last weeks & months in intensive care units, rather than hospice

[Edweird]

20. Yeah, we aren't going to see eye to eye. I'm all about Canada's model and what you're suggesting

sounds a lot more 3rd world than we've already become. No thanks.

[roseBudd]

14. "our main achievements consist of devising ways to marginally extend the lives of the very sick"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/opinion/15brooks.html

[cbayer]

11. Exactly, and that is the goal of establishing accountable care organizations.

There are huge opportunities for savings by starting the move towards evidence based care. Medicare as it currently exists is disastrous.

If we wish for it to be our model for a single payor, universally available system, we must reform it.

"Hands off my medicare" is a losing proposition.

Great post.

[roseBudd]

13. Read David Brook's article on mortality...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/opinion/15brooks.html


"The fiscal crisis is driven largely by health care costs. We have the illusion that in spending so much on health care we are radically improving the quality of our lives. We have the illusion that through advances in medical research we are in the process of eradicating deadly diseases. We have the barely suppressed hope that someday all this spending and innovation will produce something close to immortality.

S. Jay Olshansky, one of the leading experts on aging, argues that life expectancy is now leveling off. “We have arrived at a moment,” Callahan and Nuland conclude, “where we are making little headway in defeating various kinds of diseases. Instead, our main achievements today consist of devising ways to marginally extend the lives of the very sick.”

that phrase, “marginally extend the lives of the very sick,” should ring in the ears. Many of our budget problems spring from our quest to do that.

The fiscal implications are all around. A large share of our health care spending is devoted to ill patients in the last phases of life. This sort of spending is growing fast. Americans spent $91 billion caring for Alzheimer’s patients in 2005. By 2015, according to Callahan and Nuland, the cost of Alzheimer’s will rise to $189 billion and by 2050 it is projected to rise to $1 trillion annually — double what Medicare costs right now."

[loyalsister]

19. The most tragic part

is that the extension comes at the cost of home health services that reduce the strain on families and provide quality personal care during the final years\months. In the end providing that care saves money and improves quality of life for all involved. The medical community and policy makers are anxious to apply technology yet are willing to deny the resulting medical expenses.

[burrowowl]

18. K&R

[mopinko]

21. bad medicine is the most expensive medicine.

fuck it up? get paid twice!
we need to change that, and not just for financial reasons.