Historic Overhaul Seeks to Change How U.S. Pays the Doctor Bill

[Purveyor]

By Alex Wayne Jan 26, 2015 12:30 PM ET

The Obama administration will make historic changes to how the U.S. pays its annual $3 trillion health-care bill, aiming to curtail a costly habit of paying doctors and hospitals without regard to quality or effectiveness.

Starting next year Medicare, which covers about 50 million elderly and disabled Americans, will base 30 percent of payments on how well health providers care for patients, some of which will put them at financial risk based on the quality they deliver. By 2018, the goal is to put half of payments under the new system.

For doctors and health facilities, the system will tie tens, and then hundreds, of billions of dollars in payments to how their patients fare, rather than how much work a doctor or hospital does, lowering the curtain on Medicare’s system of paying line-by-line for each scan, test and surgery.

“We believe these goals can drive transformative change,” Sylvia Mathews Burwell, secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, said in the statement.

The program would be a major shift for hospitals, health facilities and physicians, eventually more than doubling the reach of programs that the U.S. said has saved $417 million and that have been a model for how the government hopes to influence, and slow down, health spending.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-26/historic-overhaul-seeks-to-change-how-u-s-pays-the-doctor-bill.html

[kickysnana]

1. Chronicly ill can kiss their ass goodbye, thanks Obama.

Can anybody in the Administration think a policy through to its conclusion?. Yeah, save money, but increase suffering and death for millions.

No doctor can or will take them under those conditions. We still think of doctors as wealthy but most are not. If they work for an HMO the pressure will double down. "Get rid of those patients or find another job." It already happens.

[jehop61]

2. This one is very concerning for seniors

No one is explaining just how this will work. Will it result in a lesser standard of care or be a boon to cost reduction. Medicare needs to explain this to all recipients so we can judge for ourselves

[Hestia]

3. This is not new news, it's been reported on for quite awhile; from the article

The Affordable Care Act, often criticized by its opponents for not doing much to control health-care costs, created several programs the Obama administration now plans to rely upon to end fee-for-service payments. For example, the law penalizes hospitals with high rates of readmissions of Medicare patients within 30 days of discharging them, and encourages doctors and hospitals to band together and closely coordinate their care, with the aim of reducing redundancies and inefficiency.