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The Senate Finance Committee has just unveiled a massive overhaul in the way Medicare pays all types of providers including Medicare plans and the way the overhaul proposes to pay doctors, hospitals and health plans based on their quality level.  It is the biggest historic paradigm shift as it means remuneration will be a pay-for-performance model.

The biggest change in the plan is that it will reward providers that achieve the highest quality and reduce payments to lower-quality providers, shifting the entire Medicare system in the direction of highest-performing companies and stimulating more capital investment based on their productivity.  The companies most negatively affected are the ones unable to meet minimum standards of quality, i.e. low HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set) scores or low survival rates of heart attack cases.

You can view the entire proposal in .pdf format here http://healthplanmarkets.com/FinanceHealthReformPolicyOptions.pdf

The Senate proposal will seemingly create a legitimate system of description, standardization and classification of major quality markers by hospitals, doctors, pharma, and Medicare Advantage plans, providing excellent chances for enactment eventhough the proposal still must be amended by the full Senate and House.

Do you think the overhaul will boost healthcare quality?
Do you think the overhaul could favor competitive bidding because rates would no longer be tied to fee-for-service?