Passing Health Care Reform Now Will Benefit Medicare Later, Says Health Care Experts

by Julianne LaJeunesse- University of New Mexico

A health policy analyst warned the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Tuesday that passing health care reform now will prevent Congress from having to make drastic changes to Medicare in the future.

“By starting now, [it] will prevent Congress from having to do very severe and very crude changes to Medicare down the road,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis during a hearing Tuesday.

“Putting this off doesn’t mean that it won’t come home at some point, and we need to deal with it and begin... as this bill does,” she said.

The state of the current bill, however, isn’t viewed as perfect.

Thomas Priselac, President and CEO of Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles, told Representatives that his hospitals are committed to and applaud reform, but says H.R. 3200 has “room for improvement.”

Priselac said he’s concerned about tying the public option to Medicare rates because of what he said is “broad discretion for the Secretary to set and negotiate rates.”

He also said he questions the bill’s method of reducing patient readmissions and discharges.

“Preventing unnecessary readmissions is a complex, system-wide goal that involves hospitals, physicians, skilled nursing facilities, and other providers who manage patient’s care, as well as patients and their families,” Priselac said. “Policies that provide incentives to reduce readmissions should focus only on unplanned readmissions that are in fact related to the initial admission, and for which the greatest opportunity exists for hospitals to reduce their reoccurrence.”

Priselac says the method, which would be used as a way for determining incentive payments, is not practical because some patient discharges and readmissions are not preventable.

While there will undoubtedly be reform ideas that are left out of the House Reform proposal, most of today’s panel guests and Representatives seemed to agree that bettering the Medicare system is a good place to start health care reform.

Jacob Hacker, Yale Political Science Professor, said that if the Government continues with a public option plan, that plan must start an extensive network of providers immediately.

He said providers who want to, should be allowed to “opt out” rather than be required to “opt in.”

“Since participation will be voluntary for providers, the plan should be able to establish rates based on Medicare rates, much like many private insurers do today,” Hacker said.

Unlike Priselac, Hacker believes, "Requiring the Secretary of Health and Human Services to figure out new prices from scratch, in consultation with providers, is inefficient and gives private plans, which already have networks in place, an unfair advantage over the public plan.”

U.S. Coast Guard Says No Apology Needed For Drill

By Julianne LaJeunesse, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

Reports of fired shots on the Potomac River were enough to scare civilians and news agencies in Washington, D.C. on the eighth anniversary of September 11, 2009.

Reports of the shots came just before 10 am Friday morning, and by noon, the U.S. Coast Guard released a statement explaining that the incident was actually a training exercise that did not consist of fired shots.

In the statement, U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral John Currier said that while the agency was sensitive to the anniversary of September 11, 2001, an apology for planned training exercises was unnecessary.

"I am not issuing an apology because, althought it is unfortunate that it escalated to this level, what you're seeing here is the result of a normal training exercise," Currier said.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today that when it comes to keeping the nation safe, he tends not to question law enforcement- even on September 11th.