So there was a round table. You can get the transcript much later, but here’s the shorter and more biased version:
Shorter Sam Nussbaum, Chief Med officer, Wellpoint — it’s 6 fold different in different places. We’ve got to measure it and tell people about it, and we can fund the good stuff by cutting out the bad. If you damn doctors would only let us….
Shorter Jack Lewin, Calif Med Association — need the information first, before you go to incentives, but the CMA is way out in front of those recalcitrant other doctors from those backwards states
Shorter Suzzane DelBanco, Leapfrog — get me more efficiency! but reward improvements, but not with any more money
Michael Cannon, thinking man’s libertarian, Cato — need to get consumers to buy with their own dollars and everyone else will change by magic
Bob Margolis, CEO Healthcare Partners — socialism is good for provider groups internally…but if we do it all according to guidelines we’ll spend more money not less
Adams Dudley, UCSF — It’s very very complex, and you have to be very smart to figure it out
Shorter John Nelson, ObGYN from Utah and the AMA — you can’t measure being a good doc, as the idiots doing the measurement don’t understand what they’re measuring. Anyway this trend is just another one like managed care and HMOs. People will game the reporting, so lets be translucent only. Anyway I’d rather reform malpractice and eliminate disease ….you fools can discuss this all you like, but lets stop Medicare cutting docs fees any more
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Did you see that Delay’s replacement was renting a house from a lobbyist who worked for us with HSAs? That’s too funny. Our lobbyist doesn’t give money to politicians he charges them $1,600 a month for a 2 bedroom apartment in Ohio, ha ha.
The St Pete Times and Hillary sound exactly the same on HSAs, – “On your own”. That’s pure cosmic debri. You can’t have a tax free HSA unless you have qualifying health insurance. If you get bone cancer the MAXIMUM Out-Of-Pocket is $5,250 in 2006. You are not on your own paying for bone marrow transplants, get real. It’s Federal law, all Liberal bimbos awake!!
P4P keeps Matthew busy not discussin’ the tax free HSA.
The study released today that suggests no obvious benefit to women from low fat diets vis a vis cancer risk is further evidence of what I have said here many times over the past year— outcomes are extremely difficult to prove; P4P advocates would be better off abandoning this game and go back to establishing ‘definitely do not dos’ instead.
The list would be short and sweet, but would actually serve to improve healthcare and not continue to convert US healthcare into a lobbying paradise where competing interests beg/ convince Congress each year to fund their project over others.
P4P is a farce and if implemented will be another thick layer of red tape in a sea of paperwork. May possibly be a boon for the IT companies since it would probably force physician practices to buy EMRs so they can have the software fill the P4P paperwork out for them.
I emailed my congresswoman and praised her for voting for the recent halt to Medicare fee cuts to doctors and the stripping from the bill of the nonsensical P4P provision. I assume the P4P will not go away and its advocates will continue to try getting it legislated as long as there are $$$ from the IT and insurance industry trying to push it through.