Obama's Health Reform Update Feb. 26

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RxBoy

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Straight from ASA:



President Barack Obama has released his FY 2010 budget proposal, entitled “A New Era of Responsibility.” Specific to health care, the President’s budget proposal includes more than $630 billion over 10 years as a “reserve fund” to give Congress necessary resources for health reform efforts.
For a complete copy of the budget document, please use the following link:
A New Era of Responsibility – President Obama’s FY 2010 budget proposal
(Please note that most health care items begin on p. 27).
The health care reserve fund will be paid for in part by $316 billion in various cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. The following is a partial list of funding cuts included in the FY 2010 budget proposal, and the estimated 10-year savings for each:

  • Encouraging hospitals serving Medicare patients to reduce readmission rates—$8.4 billion
  • Creating quality incentive programs—$12 billion
  • Establishing competitive bidding programs for Medicare Advantage—$176.6 billion
  • Promoting efficient use of primary care by bundling payments for hospital post-acute settings—$17.8 billion
  • Addressing conflicts of interest in doctor-owned specialty hospitals—savings considered negligible
  • Ensuring appropriate payments through the use of radiology benefit managers—$260 million
  • Providing “private sector” enhancements to ensure Medicare pays accurately—$2 billion
In addition, the budget would finance the reserve fund by capping itemized deductions to higher-income individuals.
Regarding physician payment, the budget document indicates the Administration’s willingness to reconsider the current Medicare physician payment system. An excerpt from the budget, p. 29, reads:
Reforming the Physician Payment System to
Improve Quality and Efficiency. The Administration
believes that the current physician
payment system, while it has served to limit
spending to a degree, needs to be reformed to
give physicians incentives to improve quality
and efficiency. Thus, while the baseline
reflects our best estimate of what the Congress
has done in recent years, we are not
suggesting that should be the future policy.
As part of health care reform, the Administration
would support comprehensive, but
fiscally responsible, reforms to the payment
formula. The Administration believes Medicare
and the country need to move toward
a system in which doctors face better incentives
for high-quality care rather than simply
more care.


While the current document includes limited details, the administration has indicated that it will release a more extensive version this spring. ASA will distribute more information as it becomes available.

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