HGA President Joel White and Chief Economist Jeff Lemieux wrote in Health Affairs last week, presenting a new, cost-effective model whereby Medicare could expand benefits – such as telehealth- using value-based arrangements. Such an approach, they argue, would help policymakers overcome the “CBO problem” of high cost estimates, as the benefit program itself could be made contingent on its success at reducing Medicare’s overall costs.
In the blog post, White and Lemieux conclude that “Allowing Medicare to selectively contract for providers under VBA arrangements for modern services would likely save billions of dollars and could ramp up quickly. But until Medicare routinely contracts more selectively, with stricter value-based conditions for proven quality and savings, progress will be slow. Under the traditional fee-for-service system, with CBO’s usual skepticism of the traditional blanket approach to fee-for-service reimbursement for new benefits, we are missing opportunities to save both lives and money.
Read the full post here.