Leaders from both sides of the aisle on the powerful Senate Finance Committee told HFMA that healthcare reform must include incentives to providers for better care coordination and quality. Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Chuck Grassley, the committee’s ranking member, both shared their vision of healthcare reform with with HFMA in new commentaries. In his commentary, Baucus said that reform must achieve the three key goals of lowering health costs, improving medical quality, and guaranteeing affordable health care for every American—or reform will fail. “Guaranteeing access does little if we cannot also guarantee quality,” Baucus said, which can be done in part by creating "incentives for healthcare providers to focus on delivering the best care and closely coordinating with a patient’s other doctors and providers." Baucus reminds readers that ensuring coverage "will make the insurance markets function properly, and costs will go down for all policyholders. And we will surely not be able to sustain our system or see a return on our investment unless we lower costs significantly.” Reform is as much about reducing waste and abuse in Medicare as it is “creating a competitive insurance market where health plans compete on price and quality,” Baucus stated. And in response to Republicans’ opposition to the Democratic proposal to offer a public health plan, Baucus reiterated that reform will preserve an individual’s choice of insurance “and ensure that those who are happy with the healthcare coverage they have now can keep it.”
Grassley’s commentary focused on the principles he says both sides of the aisle must agree on to create a bipartisan bill. He criticized the option of a government-run plan for threatening to “overtake the entire market” by causing employers to stop offering coverage and physicians from refusing to participate in a public plan if payment is modeled on Medicare rates. He emphasized that people must be able to keep their coverage if they are satisfied with it.
In addition to providing affordable coverage, reform must also ensure that people can find primary care physicians to treat them. It is also imperative, said Grassley, to “fix the inefficient ways in which Medicare pays healthcare providers. One of my goals in healthcare reform is to realign the payment incentives in Medicare to reward quality and value rather than the volume of services provided. And we must provide incentives for providers across the entire episode of care to actually coordinate the care of the patient.” Grassley said, however, that he could not support comparative effectiveness research, an initiative that Congress passed in the economic stimulus bill. The government shouldn’t “interfere with a doctor’s ability to practice medicine,” he said. “I’ll continue to raise concerns about any national health board or other federal body that directs health dollars.”
