First, I would like to thank the chair for having today’s hearing. It is a bread-and-butter part of our job, and I appreciate that we are doing it. And I would like to thank Mr. Hackbarth for coming to see us yet again.
We won’t always agree on the recommendation, but MedPAC does good work and takes seriously its charge to ensure appropriate payments and access. Government oversight keeps us accountable to the interests of the people and to the experts of our field.
It’s sometimes easy for us to stand on our respective sides screaming at each other across the aisle, but your agency can help us to find common ground and cut through the self-serving claims of special interests.
Today’s discussion will also be useful as we look at the Affordable Care Act’s opportunities to explore innovative payment and delivery systems, some of which were based on MedPAC work.
With the freedom to think in new ways about how we pay for services, align the needs of providers and patients, and deliver care, I believe we can continue to improve costs and quality for everyone while still protecting benefits.
I appreciate MedPAC’s commitment to evidence-based data. This agency has proved itself to be credible, nonpartisan and committed to transparent and well-founded methodology and results.
MedPAC’s efforts to take a comprehensive look, each year, at the underlying economics of each sector drive thoughtful recommendations rooted in reality. We share your goal to ensure that payments are both appropriate and adequate.
Medicare is an entitlement to a defined set of benefits. It is not an entitlement to specific reimbursement for providers or plans.
While we need to ensure that hospitals, doctors and others earn enough off of Medicare to preserve access, sometimes people lose sight of the program’s purpose, which is to serve the people. We likewise have an obligation to taxpayers to ensure that the payments are appropriate and not too high.
That said, given Medicare’s size and the health needs of the Medicare population and our reimbursement rates, many in the health sector have made and will continue to make a pretty penny off of the program.
So when folks come in to cry poverty over a proposed regulation or piece of legislation, we would all be well advised to take such claims with a grain of salt. And then we should pick up the phone to call MedPAC to find out just how pressed the group in question is….
Even so, while data are important, we mustn’t let ourselves lose sight of the people behind the numbers. As health economist Uwe Reinhardt noted, you can put one person on a hot stove and another on a block of ice… on average, sure, they are a comfortable temperature. Individually, they might disagree.
With that in mind, I hope we will review the recommendations in the context of our current environment and consider the challenges in the year ahead. In the time since these recommendations were voted on, the sequester has been implemented with no end in sight. Republicans failed to address it in their budget.
Instead of replacing blunt, across-the-board cuts with more justifiable, targeted proposals, they kept the sequester and added to it. These recommendations are a healthy and timely reminder that there are still plenty of well-justified potential provider savings that should be pursued before asking patients to pay even more.
Thank you again for joining us and I look forward to your report.
