Word: carefuls
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...House and Senate bills would set up institutes to compare the efficacy of various procedures. Proponents say the studies are essential to ending medical treatments that juice up fees without adding much benefit. But it is far from clear whether Congress would allow such studies to affect health care costs. Opponents say they are a precursor to medical rationing. Indeed, both the House and Senate bills explicitly prevent this research from being used to decide which services Medicare would pay for and how much it would reimburse...
Pretty much everyone agrees that the health care legislation now making its way through both houses of Congress would do some things well. It would cover almost all of the roughly 33 million legal residents of this country who now lack health insurance. And a vast expansion of Medicaid, coupled with billions of dollars in subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans buy insurance, would help ensure that most people end up spending less on their health bills, according to a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Congress's independent scorekeepers. (See 10 players in health-care...
...what about President Obama's pledge to pass a measure that reins in the larger forces driving up health care costs? Or his vow that a reformed system would deliver more-efficient care, with better results for patients? That's where the legislation could fall well short of the promises...
...recent letter to Obama, 23 prominent economists identified four provisions that they said "can go a long way toward delivering better health care, and better value, to Americans." They are: ensuring that reform doesn't add to the federal deficit; creating an independent commission to bring Medicare costs under control; discouraging high-cost insurance plans by taxing them; and changing the incentives in medicine so that doctors and hospitals are paid not for how much treatment they give but for how well it works...
...patients coming into the system. While families' health bills may go down, they say, costs for the government - and ultimately taxpayers - are sure to rise. "I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health care spending rather than restrain it," Harvard Medical School dean Jeffrey S. Flier wrote in a scathing Nov. 17 Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal. (Read "Understanding the Health-Care Debate: Your Indispensable Guide...