Greenbeard
Gold Member
So, Obama magically caused future growth of the Medicare program to simply not happen... how, exactly, did he accomplish this feat?
Medicare cost growth has slowed dramatically over the last few years and the challenge now is to keep it low. Obama's approach is straightforward: (1) shift the way Medicare pays for services away from encouraging high-volume, low (or mediocre) value service provision, and (2) promote and assist health care providers in delivering better care more efficiently and less expensively, while holding them accountable for quality outcomes. You can see some of what's coming down the pike in results from this private sector pilot in Massachusetts that incorporates some of these principles: http://www.usmessageboard.com/healt...-reform-model-lowers-costs-improves-care.html.
More importantly, there are some early indicators that providers have already begun to reorganize care delivery in response to the ongoing and coming reforms, accounting for some of Medicare's current record-low cost growth--and offering some promise that we might be entering a new era of cost containment.
No magic required, just hard work and a little good old-fashioned American ingenuity.