Hey Karl, Mayo Clinic issues statement supporting Obama's health plan

Mayo Clinic issues statement supporting Obama's health plan

Wed Sep 09, 2009 at 11:19:03 PM PDT

September 9, 2009
The following statement has been posted on the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Blog site:




~snip~

Mayo Clinic’s reaction to House Tri-Committee bill

Although there are some positive provisions in the current House Tri-Committee bill – including insurance for all and payment reform demonstration projects – the proposed legislation misses the opportunity to help create higher-quality, more affordable health care for patients. In fact, it will do the opposite.

In general, the proposals under discussion are not patient focused or results oriented. Lawmakers have failed to use a fundamental lever – a change in Medicare payment policy – to help drive necessary improvements in American health care. Unless legislators create payment systems that pay for good patient results at reasonable costs, the promise of transformation in American health care will wither. The real losers will be the citizens of the United States.

Dear Members of Congress,

We wholeheartedly support President Obama’s call for healthcare reform, and agree with his position that “the status quo is the one option that is not on the table”. We applaud the House and the Senate for their ongoing efforts to obtain universal coverage for all Americans.

The President challenged you and your colleagues to look to high quality efficient healthcare providers for ways to improve health care. Congress must encourage all U.S. physicians and hospitals to focus on quality, not quantity, and ultimately deliver better health for all Americans at lower cost.

We urge you to insist that reform legislation includes a method that pays for value and quality, rather than the quantity of medical procedures. Currently, Medicare pays the most to ten states that often provide poorer outcomes, safety, and service at higher cost, and much less to most of the country where providers demonstrate generally better outcomes, safety and service at lower cost. As healthcare providers, we believe that insertion of a measurement of value into the payment system is a critical step to change provider behavior throughout the country and “bend the cost curve” in U.S. health spending without compromising health.

The Medicare Payment Improvement Act (H.R. 2844, S. 1249) is a simple, yet bold, concept that inserts value into the Medicare physician payment schedule. We encourage you to talk to the bill’s authors (Sen. Klobuchar and Rep. Kind), and co-sponsors, about how this concept builds value
and outcomes into the payment structure without interfering with the doctor-patient relationship. We believe that this legislation is an important first step to a healthcare system where value, not volume, prevails, so that future healthcare expenditures do not expand the Federal budget deficit. For the long term, we are also encouraged by other ideas that move toward paying for value, including an independent agency that could develop value-based payment methodologies for Medicare.



~snip~