Not surprisingly, the Senate passed the “Doc Fix” bill with a 92-to-8 vote yesterday. Obama will more than likely sign off on this legislation and we’ll be on our way in figuring out the pros and cons of what this change really looks like.
The opinions about shutting down the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, shifting Medicare reimbursements to a value and quality-based system and also looking at nearly $200 billion in cost has some people talking. Not to mention the various amendments that got rejected, like the Democrat’s proposed additional money for women’s healthcare.
So people are talking. Here’s what some have said so far about where things stand with this development.
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Billy Wynne wrote in the Health Affairs Blog:
One item is kicked down the road for only a meager six months: the delay of enforcement of the so-called Two-Midnight Rule. In response to some ambiguity regarding classification of short-term inpatient stays, CMS generated this bright line rule that has proven remarkable in its ability to satisfy no one. Stakeholders have not yet been able to develop a unified alternative, though, so this area could be ripe for debate through the summer.
With this, King v. Burwell, a new President in the offing, and that 2017 omnibus package coming due, I think there will be plenty to keep the health policy community busy for the foreseeable future.
Jeffrey Young for the Huffington Post had some thoughts:
So does the end of the doc fix mean the end of legislative brinksmanship and the beginning of a new era of bipartisan cooperation in which lawmakers will actually manage the federal government like they’re supposed to? Hardly. The same week the House passed the Medicare bill, Republican senators were trying to repeal Obamacare again.
But does doing away with the farcical doc fix process at least mean Congress has solved the problem of how Medicare should pay physicians? Once again, hardly. The “sustainable growth rate” system was considered reform in 1997, and look what happened. Obama hasn’t even signed the new bill and critics are already predicting the new policy will fail based on rosy assumptions about its effectiveness … meaning someday, we may need a doc fix fix fix.
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Jason Shafrin from Healthcare Economist pointed to the pending potential difficulties ahead by saying, “This reform may just be the tip of the iceberg.”
Like with most things, there seem to be clear pluses and minuses. But despite the fact that both Republicans and Democrats are celebrating a successful collaboration in passing this bill, some others are slightly skeptical of how it will really affect healthcare.
Here’s a good rundown from Kaiser Health News of details about the bill and how things went during yesterday’s decision.
