MedPAC Releases Recommendations for Medicare Spending in 2010
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission on Friday released a report featuring several recommendations for Medicare spending in 2010, CQ HealthBeat reports. The commission recommends that Congress:
- Cut Medicare reimbursements for home health care providers by 5.5% and maintain payments to skilled nursing facilities and inpatient rehabilitation facilities at current rates;
- Increase payment rates for acute inpatient and outpatient prospective payment systems by the projected increase to the hospital market basket index;
- Implement a quality incentive program for hospitals, funded by a 1% reduction in payments to indirect medical education programs;
- Increase payments to primary care providers and decrease payments to private insurers in Medicare Advantage;
- Pay MA plans the same as providers of regular fee-for-service plans and receive higher payments only for better performance;
- Increase payments to physicians by 1.1%;
- Establish a budget neutral payment system giving primary care physicians higher payments and providing medical specialists payments funded by lower Medicare reimbursements;
- Require that manufacturers and distributors of drugs, biologicals, medical devices and supplies publicly report their financial relationships with physicians, physician groups, pharmacists, health plans and other medical professionals and make the information available to the public;
- Require all hospitals and other medical institutions that bill Medicare to send a yearly report on the ownership share of each physician who directly or indirectly owns interest in the institution, excluding publicly traded trade corporations; and
- Examine Medicare's hospice benefit, which contains incentives for long stays that might be used inappropriately in some cases (Carey, CQ HealthBeat, 2/27).
