The complexities of Medicare's doctor pay dynamics

Politico Pro: Fight Over Doctors' Payments Ignores Costs
The Medicare physician payment formula is often attacked as a budget gimmick that holds down federal spending on paper, even though everyone knows the cuts it imposes will never come into effect. Weaning lawmakers off the device, however, is challenging not only because putting an end to it gets more expensive with every passing year, but because it has failed at achieving the goal it was actually designed for: slowing cost growth. A permanent fix to the problem, experts say, requires not just being honest about what it will cost to pay doctors, but also crafting a new payment structure that will succeed where the current formula failed (Feder, 6/20).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.