Working Framework of SGR Package
House Committees on Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means, March 20, 2015
Repeal and Replace Medicare Physician Payment System. The legislation repeals the flawed SGR formula and replaces it with HR 1470, SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act (replaces SGR with MIPS, the Merit-based Incentive Payment System)
Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). This provision preserves and extends CHIP, fully funding the program through September 30, 2017.
Medicare, Medicaid, and Other Health Extenders. The legislation extends all of the extenders included in the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (PAMA, the most recent SGR patch) in addition to funding for Community Health Centers through 2017.
Other Medicare Reforms.1) Medicare DMEPOS Competitive Bidding Improvement Act (HR 284). (2) The Protecting Integrity in Medicare Act (HR 1021).
Savings.
(1) Income-related Premium Adjustment. Starting in 2018, this policy would increase the percentage that beneficiaries pay toward their Part B and D premiums in two income brackets (roughly 2 percent of beneficiaries): for individuals with income between $133.5-160K ($267-$320K for a couple), the percent of premium paid increases from 50 percent to 65 percent. For those with income between $160-214K ($320- $428K for a couple), the percent increases from 65 percent to 75 percent.
(2) Medigap Reform. The proposal limits first dollar coverage on certain Medigap plans by prohibiting plans from covering the Part B deductible. Change applies only for future retirees starting in 2020.
(3) Increase Levy Authority on Payments to Medicare Providers with Delinquent Tax Debt.
(4) Hospital Update. Under current law, hospitals will receive a 3.2 percentage point adjustment in addition to their base payment rate in FY18. This policy would phase-in this update incrementally.
(5) Additional Medicaid DSH Savings.
(6) 1 Percent Market Basket Update for Post-Acute Providers
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bipart_topline_summary-032015_final2.pdf
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What Measures Should Be Used to Evaluate Health Care?
By Melinda Beck
The Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2015
There’s little agreement among patients, providers and insurers
http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-quality-measures-should-be-used-to-evaluate-health-care-providers-1427079654
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Primum Non Nocere: Congress’s Inadequate Medicare Physician Payment Fix
By Jeff Goldsmith
Health Affairs Blog, January 24, 2014
With this legislation, Congress is preparing yet again to enshrine in statute another payment strategy that is both unproven and highly controversial.
The proposed legislation casts in concrete an almost laughably complex and expensive clinical record-keeping regime, while preserving the very volume-enhancing features of fee-for-service payment that caused the SGR problem in the first place. The cure is actually worse, and potentially more expensive, than the disease we have now.
If we’re not sure new advanced payment schemes actually work, if we haven’t actually gotten them right, then we have no business compelling or incenting 680 thousand practicing physicians to use them. We’re not going to get clinical practice where we want it to go with an elaborate, individualized operant conditioning schedule with four domains and sixty eight “core measures”, and billions more spent on the IT systems and clerical support to document them. We need to reward teamwork, not box-checking.
It isn’t just physicians that should be guided by Hippocrates’ maxim, “First Do No Harm,” but our policymakers as well.
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2014/01/24/primum-non-nocere-congresss-inadequate-medicare-physician-payment-fix/
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
We’re there. The SGR extension expires March 31, and Congress is leaving for a two week recess this Friday, March 27. Not only is there strong bipartisan Congressional support for HR 1470, the SGR repeal and replacement act, but there is also overwhelming support from the AMA and other physician societies and from other influential interest groups such as Families USA. The bill will pass this week.
The last two Quote of the Day messages have discussed some serious defects in this legislation, especially the problems with the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). But that part of the bill is a given. What is new today is the one page summary of the intended amendments that will be added before enactment of the bill (see “Working Framework of SGR Package,” above).
Two items in these proposed amendments are of particular concern: 1) Means-testing of Medicare Part B and Part D premiums, and 2) Prohibiting Medigap plans from covering the Part D deductible.
Under means-tested premiums, higher-income individuals will be required to pay larger premiums, undermining the support of this influential group for the traditional Medicare program. Since they will be paying higher premiums, many likely would prefer to select their own coverage from a market of private Medicare plans – a goal of those supporting privatization of Medicare through the premium-support model of reform. Thus this provision would be a significant incremental step towards privatization.
Prohibiting Medigap plans from covering Medicare Part B deductibles expands the implementation of consumer-directed approaches to financing health care. It advances the conservative agenda of requiring more personal responsibility on the part of patients, often expressed by the repulsive “skin in the game” rhetoric. Much has been written about the potential adverse consequences of deductibles, but the more ominous portent of this measure is that it establishes the principle that all health care must conform with the consumer-directed model. As we have seen, the use of ever higher deductibles is rapidly expanding in employer-sponsored plans, and this opens the door for the same rapid increase in cost sharing to occur with Medicare.
But back to the basic bill – using the MIPS to replace the SGR. In the last two Quote of the Day messages it was pointed out what an administrative nightmare MIPS would bring us. What should be particularly alarming is that these new required administrative procedures have not been shown to either significantly decrease the volume of medical services, or improve quality – supposedly the two goals of payment reform.
As Jeff Goldsmith states about last year’s version of the same policies, “The proposed legislation casts in concrete an almost laughably complex and expensive clinical record-keeping regime, while preserving the very volume-enhancing features of fee-for-service payment that caused the SGR problem in the first place. The cure is actually worse, and potentially more expensive, than the disease we have now.”
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