Health Care Leaders to Senate: Defeat Medicare Expansion Proposal

Friday, December 11, 2009

What:
An opportunity to discuss significant concerns that several top health care provider organizations have about the proposed Medicare expansion proposal.

Who:
John Noseworthy, M.D.
President and CEO, Mayo Clinic

David Barrett, M.D.
President and CEO, Lahey Clinic

Denis Cortese, M.D.
CEO Emeritus, Mayo Clinic

Toby Cosgrove, M.D.
CEO, Cleveland Clinic

Rob Nesse, M.D.
CEO, Franciscan Skemp Healthcare

Karl Ulrich, M.D.
President and CEO, Marshfield Clinic

When:
3 p.m. CST
Friday, Dec. 11, 2009

Dial-in number:
800-895-6437

Note:
An audio recording of this briefing will be available immediately after the event at Mayo Clinic's Health Policy Blog.

Alternatively, you can access archived recordings by selecting "Start/Manage/Archive" from the Ready-Access Web Meeting Conference Control screen from www.globalcrossing.com/conferencing. See Quick Links section on right side of screen, under Web Meeting. At the Conference Center login screen, enter your Ready-Access phone number, 7-digit access code and Chairperson passcode and click Login button. Select Manage Recordings from menu box on left side of screen.

Background:
We support health care reform. The goal of health care reform should be to create a health care system that provides all Americans with better care at lower costs. We must build health care reform upon what's working& not on what's failing. Medicare is failing. Bringing more patients in to a system that is totally flawed will exacerbate both our nation's health care and economic crises.

The current Medicare payment system is financially unsustainable. Any plan to expand Medicare, which is the government's largest public plan, does not solve the nation's health care problems, but compounds them. We need to fix Medicare by moving it to a system that pays for value — high-quality, affordable health care — and ensure its success, before bringing more people into a broken system.

Expanding the Medicare system to persons ages 55 to 64 years old would ultimately hurt patients by accelerating the financial ruin of hospitals and doctors across the country and limiting patient access. A majority of Medicare providers currently suffer great financial loss under the program. The best providers, those who achieve excellent outcomes at a low cost, suffer the greatest losses under the current system. As a result of these losses, a growing number of providers have begun to limit the number of Medicare patients in their practices.

Despite the controls that Medicare has over what doctors and hospitals can charge, the Medicare program has not curbed overall spending, especially after adjusting for benefits covered and the cost shift from Medicare to private insurance. This is clearly an unsustainable model, and one that would be disastrous for our nation's hospitals, doctors and eventually our patients if expanded to even more beneficiaries.

It's also clear that an expansion of the price-controlled Medicare payment system will not control overall Medicare spending or curb costs. The Commonwealth Fund has reported this result for Medicare overall by looking at two time periods — one four-year period where Medicare physician fees increased and one four-year period where Medicare physician fees decreased. Overall cost per beneficiary increased at the same rate during each time period. This scenario follows the typical pattern for price controls — reduced access, compromised quality and increasing costs anyway. We need to address these problems — not perpetuate them — through innovative health reform legislation.

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