Momentum for 2009 Medicare Pay Hike and other MedPac tidbits
MedPac is advising Congress to reduce payments to Medicare private plans (for those of you keeping score, this is the insurance subsidy program that the federal government pays to medicare advantage type of plans 13% more than it costs the government itself and whereby these private plans in turn offer to pay providers less) and suggesting a 1.1% (not a misprint) increase in reimbursement for 2009 rather than the proposed 10.6% reduction which is supposed to take place July 1, 2009.
What I found more interesting was the recommendation to “soften” P4P by recommending that “…Congress require HHS to make a confidential report to physicians comparing the services they and their peers provide to Medicare beneficiaries”.
They believe that this would set up a future foundation because by making the report “confidential” it would increase the number of physicians reporting data. So much for transparency in health care!
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