Joseph Antos' analysis of Medicare's fiscal crisis and reform options that could make the program sustatainable; a response to a request from 16 health professionals elected to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives for public comment on Medicare reform. 

Does Congress need IPAB?

Medicare is facing a fiscal calamity: how can the growth of Medicare spending be limited while ensuring that beneficiaries continue to have access to affordable health care?

The Financial Alignment Initiative has set ambitious time frames for making sweeping changes in the care offered to dual eligibles.  Will dual eligibles be able to obtain the services they need once they are shifted into these new health plans? Will savings come at the expense of patient care, or will this approach lead to real efficiencies in delivering care?

In a just released piece in the New England Journal of Medicine piece, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) healthcare economist and former Congressional Budget Office official Joseph Antos assesses the Wyden-Ryan Medicare reform proposal.

“Americans spend too much on health care.” “We have worse health outcomes than our European counterparts.” Talking points such as these helped drive President Obama’s controversial and sweeping health care reform into law two years ago. But are they accurate?

The president took an extra week to develop his budget, but the extra time was apparently not enough to yield Medicare policies that could produce real savings. Competitive bidding offers a better solution, but only if we are willing to give it a chance.

For all the talk about the Affordable Care Act's mandate to purchase insurance, you might think that the mandate is the linchpin of the entire law. It isn't, at least from the standpoint of whether the insurance market will collapse without it.