Sequester On! The Policy & Practice Podcast
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secret stray shin cuts become a reality. Welcome to the March 4th edition of Policy and Practice. Weekly podcast from I am N. G. Medical Media. I'm Francis Gordon. If you see Medicare patients expect a 2% pay cut starting on April 1st because of the sequester, which went into effect March 1st, lawmakers have less than a month to negotiate a deal to avoid the cuts. Not a lot of time. Dr. Jeremy Lazarus, the president of the American Medical Association, said the 2% cut will have a significant impact, both because of stagnant payment rates and rising costs. A 2% cut a races, you know, half of what's been gained over the past 12 years and continues to widen that gap between what Medicare pays and what it costs, actually to care for patients and doctors practices. Uh, this is on top of the the yearly concerns about even larger cuts that we've been going through over the past decade. Doctors aren't the only ones facing cuts. Federal health care agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, will see cuts as deep as 9%. Those type of cuts could stifle innovation, Doctor Lazarus said. Cups like that, which are are basically media axe approach, could interfere with important programs that physicians in the country needs to have a better high performing health care system. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, a Senate Finance Committee hearing was remarkable for what was not said. Not a single GOP senator suggested repealing the A c A. The senators were delving into what, if any, difference the A C A has made in helping to rein in Medicare costs and foster innovation. Utah Republican Orrin Hatch focused in on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. That division has been awarding grants to physicians who are organizing new payment and delivery models. The center has launched 14 initiatives and received more than 30,000 applicants for one program alone, the Health Care Innovation Awards. But CMS Deputy Acting administrator Jonathan Bluhm delivered a few additional specifics. Senator Hatch said he was concerned that the Innovation Centre has been given too much money and not enough oversight. Like many of my colleagues, our main concern, that's it has an enormous question and very little kind of I'm hopeful that will hold another hearing that focuses explicitly. I'm seeing in I and the results of the $10 billion in taxpayer money, and it was getting to them to advance a cause of higher quality. GOP lawmakers in the House took the administration to task for not doing more to stop fraud. HHS has put new fraud detection tools in place, but both Medicare and Medicaid remain on the Government Accountability Office is high risk list for fraud, waste and abuse. Congressman Michael Burgess, a Republican from Texas, said he's frustrated with the lack of progress. If we're serious about bringing down the cost of health care, if we're serious about protecting the patient, if we're serious about avoiding another sequester, if we're serious about fixing the inequities in the payment system for physicians and Medicare, we ought to be all about eliminating this problem. But Dr Peter Benedetti, who runs the Center for Program Integrity at CMS, said his agency has made major changes in how they handle fraud moving away from the old pay and chase model. We have definitely been implementing systems that that are stopping payments from going out the door traded by incoming claims but looking at at a broader perspective, stay with us for more on the impact of sequester cuts and all the health reform implementation news. And that's the policy practised podcast. I'm Francisco area.