MedPAC Chair Discusses Challenges In Interview With The Hill

The Hill on Friday published an interview with Glenn Hackbarth, chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, who discussed problems with the long-term financial stability of Medicare, reimbursements for private Medicare Advantage plans and physician reimbursements, among other issues. According to Hackbarth, problems with long-term financial stability are the "biggest" threat to Medicare, and, although "people pay lip service to it at times," no one "is really addressing the issue in a substantive way." He added that MedPAC is "really concerned about the lack of attention" to the issue because the longer the U.S. waits to address the problems, "the more difficult" the problems will become.

Hackbarth also said that health care has become a "very prominent" issue in the current presidential campaign. "It'll be interesting to see whether we are prepared to actually do something. Difficult choices will be required and a lot of consensus building required," he said.

In addition, Hackbarth said that MedPAC supports the "basic idea" of MA, which "is to offer beneficiaries the opportunity to enroll in private health plans," but does "think that private plans ought to be ... paid the same amount" as traditional Medicare "would have spent on behalf of the same beneficiaries." Hackbarth added that the "flaw" in MA "is the (payment) benchmarks that are set for the plans" because "those benchmarks are not market-set prices," but "prices that were set by Congress as part of a political process."

Hackbarth also discussed efforts to revise the "sustainable growth rate" formula used to determine Medicare physician reimbursements. According to Hackbarth, the problem with the formula "is the budget baseline created by the SGR mechanism," which "is so low relative to current payments that it's really a barrier to trying to do something sensible to reform physician payments" (Young, The Hill, 9/21).

Reprinted with kind permission from kaisernetwork. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation© 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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