Big mistake!

Scaling Back Changes to Medicare Payments

Under intense pressure from health care lobbyists and lawmakers, the Bush administration says it will scale back and delay proposed changes in Medicare payments to hospitals that would have created clear winners and losers.

The proposals would have cut payments by 20 percent to 30 percent for many complex treatments and new technologies. Hospitals will instead see much smaller cuts or even small increases for many of those procedures. Some of the changes will be phased in over three years.

Doctors, hospitals, consumer groups and members of Congress had said the proposed cuts would be devastating. Under the proposals, they said, patients would have had less access to some services like cardiac care.

On Tuesday night, the Bush administration issued a final rule that reaffirmed the overall goal of more accurate payments while backing away from many of the proposed changes, including a sweeping revision in the classification of patients intended to account for the severity of their illnesses.

The reaction from Wall Street analysts on Wednesday was positive.

Why should anyone care about Wall Street analysts? I thought our focus was improving patient care. The majority of hospitals in the US are hurt by this “roll back”. The new plan would have helped community hospitals, public hospitals, and most traditional hospitals.

I have previously blogged on this issue. As one might predict Roy Poses at Health Care Renewal is upset and has written a very long rant on this topic – Wooden-Headed Reimbursement Continues, and Medical Device Companies Celebrate

I believe the big problem is that the high payment for device advocates have a great deal of money to have an organized lobbying effort. Old patients with pneumonia have little money and no one to lobby to improve their care.

Whenever political interests influence medical care (and remember this is not solely a US problem, it is also prevalent in other forms in other countries), patient care just might suffer. I believe this decision is a net loss for overall patient care.