Visitor Comments
Putting Doctors on the Medicare RAC
I see you've found some good examples of RAC "overreach" but you would you go about reducing fraud in Medicare? Or are you really claiming that no physician or provider would seek to defraud Medicare?
We can do better than that! Currently, Medicare means-tests Part B premiums: higher-income seniors pay more. I recently wrote a Health Policy Prescription (http://tinyurl.com/6m8xw2) recommending that Medicare means-test the deductible instead, i.e., raise the deductible for higher-income seniors. That way, patients will save money directly by keeping doctors honest, and minimizing the need for bureaucratic intervention.
We can do better than that! Currently, Medicare means-tests Part B premiums: higher-income seniors pay more. I recently wrote a Health Policy Prescription (http://tinyurl.com/6m8xw2) recommending that Medicare means-test the deductible instead, i.e., raise the deductible for higher-income seniors. That way, patients will save money directly by keeping doctors honest, and minimizing the need for bureaucratic intervention.
- posted by John R. Graham
- August 6, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
- Permalink
Post Your Comment Here
| SPN Headquarters: 2020 North 14th Street Ste 250 Arlington, VA 22201 Phone: (703) 243-1655 | West Coast Office: PO Box 5208 Richmond, CA 94805 Phone: (510) 965-9700 |
Unfortunately, the byzantine rules make it extremely easy to physicians to inadvertently violate their many rules, merely contributing to the invisible administrative overhead and raising health costs.
As many have already pointed out, the alleged administrative savings of Medicare are caused by shifting the onerous paperwork requirements onto the physicians' offices. Systems like RAC merely worsen this problem.
Ideally, Medicare would be eliminated entirely and replaced with private alternatives (just as I hope would be eventually done with other entitlements such as Social Security).
But in the meantime, I'm certainly open to intermediate steps that align incentives properly to keep doctors honest without creating yet another draconian bureaucracy, provided that these are steps on the way to the eventual elimination of Medicare as a government entitlement.