Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

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

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.

More

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. That's what common core is attempting to do with teacher pay. What's ironic is that insurance companies are to blame for the rising costs to begin with and now the government is allowing them to get away with it! This could cause their own demise.

Anonymous said...

2:06 please explain to me how insurance companies are to blame for rising insurance costs

Anonymous said...

So the president now will determine what is quality health care? Code for shakedown of those we don't like. We are on our way to dying at home a slow death without any health care.

Gov run healthcare will follow the same path as the postal service, VA, education, and the tax code, but at 10 times the speed to the final disaster.

Anonymous said...

I don't believe you can totally blame a doctor for his patient's outcome. It depends on the patient's physical condition, history, lifestyle, most of which is dependent on whether the patient complies with their medical instructions.

Anonymous said...

It's a snowball effect 10:58. Because their prices steadily climbed people began to go uninsured which led them to have to pay doctors less or have doctors spend less the with patients. They then raised prices to compensate for the loss of revenue from those who could no longer afford insurance.

Anonymous said...

....and when that no longer worked the government stepped in to make it a law to have insurance.

Anonymous said...

10:58 , 9:51, and 10:16, have any of you thought that just maybe the ceo's of the insurance companies are in need of raises as well? Or perhaps our politicians have some sort of interest ($$$) in these companies too?