| Re: Burgess joins Ryan in gutting Medicare |
Poster: PKelly Posted: 2012/4/11 23:23:06 I’m going to side-step the military spending issue here because other than knowing it’s a huge part of the budget, frankly I just don’t know enough about it. However, healthcare – now I actually to have some knowledge there. I work for a company that focuses on healthcare – a lot of it regarding avoidable readmissions ($17 billion wasted each year according to a fairly recent MedPAC study). We have presented our solutions to CFOs who look at us and ask straight up – ‘Why in the world would I want to keep patients from readmitting?’ The major problem here is the reimbursement system in health care is completely wrong. Most payors, including Medicare, reimburse based on quantity of visits, not on quality of outcomes. The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) actually makes some strides to address this issue. Hospitals will soon (Oct of this year) be at risk for excess readmissions. There was $500 million dollars set aside to encourage programs that take a vertical view of transitions of care (getting outpatient docs, hospitals, Nursing Homes, Home Health, etc. all pulling in the same direction). Further efforts can be seen with the Pioneer ACO program, Innovation Grants, the Bundled Payment Initiative, and others. All initiatives are trying to shift payments to quality rather than quantity. However, a very large issue when attempting this is shifting people’s thinking process from more money == better care. It does not. In many aspects, more money (paying for volume) actually encourages worse care. |