WHY, OH WHY, CAN WE NOT JUST HAVE THE ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL, MINIMAL PAPERWORK, NO CONFUSION UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER?
http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/blog/future-according-hhs
At a Jan. 26 Department of Health and Human Services meeting with consumers, health plans, healthcare providers and business leaders, HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced concrete goals and a timeline for shifting Medicare payments from fee for service to fee for value.
HHS has, for the first time in the history of the Medicare program, set a goal of pushing a significantly larger share of Medicare payments through alternative payment models such as accountable care organizations (ACOs) and bundled payments. The shift will be from 20 percent ($72.4 billion) in 2014 to 30 percent ($113 billion) in 2016 and 50 percent ($213 billion) in 2018—a compound annual growth rate of 31 percent for 2014-2018.
In addition, HHS wants to tie 85 percent of all fee-for-service Medicare payments to quality or value by 2016, and 90 percent by 2018, through programs such as the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing and Hospital Readmissions Reduction Programs.
In support of these two goals, as well as broader expansion of alternative payment models, HHS is creating a Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network. Through this new organization, which will start meeting in March, HHS will work with private payers, employers, consumers, providers, states and state Medicaid programs, and other partners to add alternative payment models into their programs.
Implications
HHS’s bold, significant announcement certainly begs the question as to how the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will be able to engineer such significant shifts in the way the federal government will pay for healthcare services for much of the Medicare population. There are a number of important implications of this announcement....
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