The Virginian-Pilot
©
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is joining the debate on the Senate health care bill today , proposing with 10 other Democratic senators a package of amendments they hope will lay the groundwork for a shift from pay-for-service medical care to a system where payments are based on the quality and outcome of treatment.
It’s an effort, among other things “to bring price transparency to the system,” Warner said Monday. Some elements of their proposals are already included in the Senate and House bills; however, their amendments require speedier and more aggressive changes to get medical cost under control, Warner said. “We’re killing our economy.”
Much of the recent debate on the House and Senate proposals has centered on how to pay for health care reform, who should pay the bill, what procedures should or shouldn’t be covered, and the merits or flaws of a government insurance option.
The amendments developed by the 11 senators focus on requiring more accountability by creating new methods for collecting and comparing information on costs, treatments and outcomes. They would require Medicare, for example, to switch to a pay-for-performance method, rather than simply pay for services rendered.
If approved, Warner predicts consumers will be able to more easily compare prices and services to get the best value.
“What Travelocity and some of these sites did to airline fares, we hope to do with health care,” he said. “That got rid of the stuff in the market that doesn’t work.”
The amendments propose to simplify health care billings and information sharing by creating more universal standards and forms. They also propose to quicken the government’s reaction to reports of fraudulent claims.
“Right now they do pay and chase. They pay and chase later to catch the fraud,” said Aryana Khalid, a Warner aide specializing in health care. The amendments push agencies to stop mid-payment to investigate reports of fraud to catch abuses more quickly.
Joining Warner in proposing the amendments are fellow first-term Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska; Michael Bennet and Tom Udall of Colorado; Roland Burris of Illinois; Kay Hagan, of North Carolina; Ted Kaufman of Delaware; Paul Kirk of Massachusetts; Jeff Merkley of Oregon; Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire; and Mark Udall of New Mexico.
The group has been working on the proposal for months.
Warner said Monday that he’s not ready to say how he might vote on the entire Senate bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who crafted the legislation by merging two other Senate bills, has said the debate, which began last week. could last until Christmas.
Warner said that to win his support it’s important that his amendment be included. He also restated Monday that his ''grave concern” with including a new government insurance option in the bill because of the long-term liability.
The senators’ amendments already are getting some support.
“I think it’s a good thing,” said Laurens Sartoris , president of the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association, based in the Richmond area. “It’s an effort toward actually reforming the delivery system.”
Sartoris said the House bill, HR3962, which passed that chamber this fall, and the Senate measure, HR3590, now being debated don’t adequately address the fee-for-service system that bases medical payments to doctors and other providers on what they do, not necessarily what is best for the patient.
The current system can penalize doctors financially, Sartoris said. Medical professionals “aren’t paid for doing better, they’re paid for doing care.” Bill Bartel, (757) 446-2398, bill.bartel@pilotonline.com
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Yahoo
Free Market
If Sen. Warner and the other social workers in Congress would stop limiting health care resources and competitors through legislation and regulation from their various bureaucracies, payments would be based on the quality and outcome of treatment. When the population is allowed to choose instead of having its choices limited by the government, that is always the result.
The government is the perp that has mucked up health care in this country. It created the need for Medicare and was responsible for allowing the waste and graft that it is now ranting and raving about. If it would just back out the controls that it has placed on the industry, including through the DHS, AMA, FDA, and various other bureaucracies that it has developed to limit competition and drive prices up, more competitors would pop up, there would be more innovation, and the public would sustain the most effective and least expensive sources. It would take some time after the cost of medical school came down to produce a sufficient number of doctors and hospitals, but by the time they get spreading those available across another 30-50 million people, there's going to be a real shortage crisis anyway.
The gov
Gov't options
If Warner is against a public option, perhaps he will opt out of the FEHB which he and ALL members of congress enjoy. Those who say they want congresspeople to have the same plan as the rest of us, apparantly don't realize that FEHB is an option which works. ALso, how many members of Congress are on Medicare, with a FEHB plan as supplement? If they can have those GOVERNMENT-RUN plans, why shouldn't the rest of the population have the same availability?
Personally, I have two gov't run plans, (medicare and Tricare-for-life), and the option of FEHB from my civil service days, if I should choose to use it. The key word is CHOOSE! Neither I nor my family have been denied care from either of them.
Instead of him fiddling
around with this, he needs to be telling us he's NOT supporting this BHOCare charade that's waaay more about government control of our lives than actually providing better/more affordable medical care. Like Webb, he's already on extremely thin ice with enough taxpayers in VA. But it will be the final nail in his political coffin should he betray us on this scam. (Lord, we had such high hopes for him what with his rep for successfully running a business. Too bad all that good sense went into the dumpster when his thirst for power took over.)
"Joining Warner in proposing the amendments are fellow first-term . . . " (key words first term.) This is the most telling sentence in the article. Obviously Warner, like the other "rookies", is showing his hand - he's gonna vote for the BHOcarecharade, but hopes this "stand"
he's taking will be enough to fool us that he's willing to buck Hairy Reid & the other apparatchiks; thus, is somehow worthy of our votes come re-election.
The most sensible thing Warner's uttered since taking office is "We're killing our economy" & applies to just about every initiative he's aided the far Left Socialists in foisting upon us.
Anything the govt. puts
Anything the govt. puts forth that's 2,000 pages long and incomprehensible to almost anyone who tries to read it should be DOA. If Warner, one of the wealthiest senators in Washington, I guess he's a rich liberal, votes for this he's toast.
Health Clunking
Let me see if I understand Cash for Clunkers. Final Tally: You traded in a car worth 3500.00. You got a discount of 4500.00. Net so far 1000.00. (But you have to pay 1350.00 in taxes for the 4500.00. Net so far 350.00.
And you paid 3000.00 more then the car was selling for one month before cash for clunkers went into effect. So who made out in the deal. The Feds collected taxes on car along with the 4500.00 they gave you The car dealer made an extra 3000.00 or more on every car they sold along with kickbacks from manufacturers and loan companies. the manufacturers got to dump cars they couldn't give away one month before and the poor consumers got saddled with even more debt then they could afford!Pres. Obama and his merry men convinced Joe the consumer that he was getting 4500.00 in "free money from the government, when in fact we gave away our 3500.00 paid for cars and paid 3500.00 for the privilege. Just wait until we get health care at no additional costs over what we now pay for our insurance. Priceless.
This is just another way of saying
the government is going to manage your health care - on, not Warner's, Webb's, Obama's or anyone in Washington.....just us, the regular citizens who pay the taxes.....stay out of my health care.....I do not want the government telling me what treatment I need or don't need, especially if I'm paying the tab which I am, now and will be then.
Warner will support health reform
Sen. Warner is absolutely right. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way medical providers are paid, transitioning from fee-for-service to pay for performance on evidence-based best practices. I hope his proposed amendments are adopted to expedite that change. However, if they are not adopted, Sen. Warner should recognize that “some elements of their proposals are already included in the Senate and House bills.”
Sen. Warner understands that the status quo is unsustainable for government, businesses, and consumers. I trust that he will vote for cloture and then vote for the final health reform bill.
The reality
Lawyers make that impossible. If you skip on a test or treatment because it's unlikely to work, lawyers will come in and sue you for a million dollars. That million comes out of our premiums.
Biology Confounds Statistical Regulation
The problem with Warner's business model approach is that our bodies do not conform to even the best statistics. What works for 60 or 80% of patients may kill you. Rather than efficiency, we wind up with micromanaged rationing and that is the wrong way to go.
A load of bull!
Warner votes in lockstep with his liberal, tax-and-spend, big-government, more-bureaucracy, more social programs, more nanny-state colleagues on the LEFT side of the aisle...
See through the smokescreen folks, and be warned about this 8000lb gorilla in the room that is going to do the following:
1) reduce quality of care across the board
2) further bloat our massively plump federal government
3) create new taxes and penalties into perpetuity (maybe even jail)
4) extend benefits/insurance to illegals one way or another
5) wipe out ANY competition in the marketplace as the government squeezes insurers out (gov't doesn't have to make a profit...)
6) increase waiting times to see a physician
7) explode the federal debt (the accounting tricks Dems are using to make it only look like a $1,000,000,000,000 program uses revenues that won't be realized for years and doesn't account for costs that will begin immediately)
8) make a health care system with the efficiency of the US Postal Service
This is a travesty in our lifetime!