Fix Health Care Policy

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The congressional formula that determines the annual Medicare payment update for physicians, the sustainable growth rate (SGR), was supposed to cut Medicare doctors’ pay each year starting in 2002. But that congressional formula is so flawed and unworkable that every year since 2003, Congress has stepped in to stop it from going into effect. In 2013, without another congressional “doc fix,” the physicians would have had a pay cut of 26.5 percent.

The formula is called the sustainable growth rate because it links Medicare physician pay increases to the performance of the general economy, not to the market-based conditions of supply and demand that would determine the price of medical services. So if Medicare physcians’ pay in any given year rises faster than economic growth, then their pay is automatically reduced the following year.

There’s an added dimension to this problem: Every year the pay cut is delayed, the size of the cut the following year is bigger.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: doc fix, flawed, Medicare, pay increase, performance, premium support, SGR, Sustainable Growth Rate, unworkable

A recent Gallup poll revealed that 47 percent of Americans—a plurality—support repeal of Obamacare. While the reasons for the law’s unpopularity are limitless, its broken CLASS program and unsuccessful small business tax credit may play a role.

A few weeks ago, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it would halt implementation of the CLASS program, the government-run long-term care program created by the health care law, since it was unsustainable and unworkable. This put CLASS on life support, but since it isn’t dead yet, its repeal is crucial.

Earlier this week, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee moved legislation by Representative Charles Boustany (R–LA) one step closer to the President’s desk to repeal the CLASS Act.   (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: CLASS Act, Gallup poll, repeal Obamacare, unsustainable, unworkable