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Tag: health care spending cuts

Breaking the Curve of Health Care Inflation

The evidence is building: As we move toward making the Affordable Care Act a reality, Medicare spending is slowing, and even in the private sector, for the first time in more than a decade, insurers are focusing on reining in health care costs.

The passage of reform legislation two years ago prompted a change in how both health care providers and payers think about care. The ACA told insurers that they would no longer be able to shun the sick by refusing to cover those suffering from pre-existing conditions. They also won’t be allowed to cap how much they will pay out to an desperately ill patient over the course of a year –or a lifetime. Perhaps most importantly, going forward, insurance companies selling policies to individuals and small companies will have to reimburse for all of the “essential benefits” outlined in the ACA–benefits that are not now covered by most policies. This means that, if they hope to stay in business, they will have to find a way to ”manage” the cost of care–but they won’t be able to do it by denying needed care.

As for providers, they, too, will be under pressure. A growing number will no longer be paid “fee for service” that rewards them for “volume”–i.e. “doing more.” Bonuses will depend on better outcomes, and keeping patients out of the hospital–which means doing a better job of managing chronic illnesses. Meanwhile, Medicare will be shaving 1% a year from annual increases in payments to hospitals. If medical centers want to stay in the black, they, too, will have to provide greater “value” for health care dollars– better outcomes at a lower cost.

This summer the Supreme Court’s decision sealed the deal. The ACA is constitutional. Health care reform is here to stay.

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You Have to Break Some Eggs If You Want to Make an Omelet

In my last blog I explained how at one time our nation’s healthcare budget was relatively small and our economy was robust, so that economic growth could accommodate rising health spending and still allow us to spend more on other goods and services. Today our healthcare budget is huge and growing, while our economy stagnates. Economic growth is barely enough to pay for rising healthcare spending, with little left over to buy more of anything else. In the next few blogs I will explore our options for cutting health spending. To the extent that economic theory and empirical evidence allows, I will also discuss the likely consequences. It should come as no surprise to say that all of these options entail some risks. But if we are to avoid putting all our eggs in the healthcare basket, then we must decide which risks are worth taking.

A simple fact of accounting guides my analysis: If we want to spend less money on medical services, then we either (a) pay lower prices for the services we buy, (b) substitute away from high price services in favor of lower priced alternatives, or (c) purchase fewer services. There are no other options. Moreover, we can do these things either by government fiat or through markets and incentives. In this blog I explore options (a) and (b), mainly focusing on Medicare.

The Affordable Care Act calls for substantial reductions in Medicare fees, providing the largest anticipated cost savings in the ACA. (Private insurers relied on market forces to reduce provider fees in the 1990s, only to see providers gain the upper hand and sharply increase fees in the 2000s.) It is clear that the federal government has the power to reduce Medicare fees, but should it? What are the consequences?

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Red or Blue Pill for Payment Reform? Both Won’t Work

Are the House and Senate giving us a false choice for how to control health care costs in Massachusetts? Aren’t there other options?

A few major themes have emerged from the two payment reform proposals and highlight the fact that they fail to align incentives for patients to be more involved in the purchase of their health insurance and their health care.

For example, even with full transparency of cost and quality (which is a huge lift on its own) for many patients, high-cost still correlates with higher quality in medicine. A recent report from Attorney General Coakley proved this theory wrong, but simply providing patients with cost data without placing the right incentives in their health plan to choose the low-cost high-quality provider will result in many selecting the most expensive care. As a result, these proposals will fall short of sustainably bending the cost curve.

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