Medicare is unequivocally popular and is often held up as a model of successful health care policy. Yet it is a growing drag on the federal budget, expected to make up nearly 17 percent of spending by 2025 (by comparison, income security programs like food stamps and various tax credits to the poor will make up 6 percent). Moreover, Medicare’s approach to paying for care — traditionally based on volume, not quality — props up inefficiencies in the health care system.
“Use efficiencies from the private sector to drive lower costs, and likely better outcomes, while still protecting the most vulnerable beneficiaries.”
A series of reforms can both bring costs in line and improve care for those using Medicare.
One short-term approach is to modernize Medicare’s outdated cost-sharing structure and include an annual cap on beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket spending. Combined with restrictions on supplemental plans, this would save $114 billion over 10 years while reducing what the sickest Medicare beneficiaries pay for their care. Another approach would focus on building up existing experiments under the Affordable Care Act — like bundled payments for certain hospital services — and making successful schemes permanent.
A more long-term approach would make use of an efficient and successful program within Medicare: Medicare Advantage. Under Medicare Advantage...
Read the entire piece here at The New York Times' Room for Debate
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Yevgeniy Feyman is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a senior research assistant at the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. Previously, he was MI's deputy director of health policy. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Times Room for Debate