Orszag sees legislative gridlock ahead

By Melanie Evans
ModernHealthcare.com, June 28, 2011

Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, speaking before health finance executives in Orlando, said an overhaul of U.S. healthcare payment to reward value cannot succeed without Medicare, yet policymakers face gridlock in what is a highly politicized environment.

Commercial insurers are too fragmented to change healthcare payments, but Medicare has the clout, he explained. Options under consideration to address the nation’s rising healthcare costs, which Orszag called the primary source of the U.S. fiscal woes, won’t accomplish much, Orszag said. Cuts to Medicare provider payments are “blunt” and “temporarily effective” but not a “long-term answer.” He dismissed rationing care as politically unviable. Proposals to increase household financial liability for healthcare are least effective among the most costly patients, which policy makers must address to slow spending, he said.

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20110628/NEWS/306289975

Healthcare Financial Management Association
http://www.hfmaconference.org/2011/06/orszag-key-to-improving-quality-is-reducing-variation/

According to Peter Orszag, “commercial insurers are too fragmented to change healthcare payments, but Medicare has the clout.” Though he didn’t expand on that with the obvious extrapolation, we can. Let’s get rid of the commercial insurers and improve and expand Medicare so that it covers everyone.