Wyden-Ryan Medicare Reform Shows the New Healthcare Consensus

Naturally WH is against. First sign GOOD BILL...

Been doing a little studying on this and reminded of something brucetee ALWAYS COMPLAINED ABOUT Bush saying was NOT PAID FOR_ Part D. Never mind PAY AS YOU GO was passed under the BUM. Here's proof Part D SAVED MONEY...

“The Medicare prescription drug benefit, a.k.a. Part D, has shown that choice and competition works to bring down costs. In August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released data showing that Part D premiums would actually be going down in 2012, something that almost never happens in government health programs. Ezra concedes that “there’s something to this argument,” but explains it this way:”

“The question is what accounts for Part D’s performance, and whether it could be exported elsewhere in the health-care system. Medicare’s actuaries say (pdf) that the reason the program is costing less than Congress expected is that pharmaceutical innovation has unexpectedly slowed in recent years. That’s meant the program is paying for fewer new, expensive drugs than anticipated, and more old, generic drugs. This has cut costs substantially, but not through inter-plan competition. For much the same reason, national drug spending — which includes non-Part D plans — has been 35 percent lower than we expected in 2006.”

“But Ezra unintentionally hits on why the U.S. prescription-drug market is the most efficient in the world: competition. That is to say, not just competition among the way we buy drugs (insurance plans), but also among how we sell them. The reason we spend less on drugs than government officials previously estimated is because cheaper, generic competitors have driven down the price of previously expensive medicines. In other words, competition is not at the periphery, but at the center, of why drug spending is lower today than some people expected.”

“This principle—the principle of making the sellers of health care compete with each other—is at the heart of competitive bidding, which in turn is the core of the Wyden-Ryan proposal. In rural areas where hospital monopolies reign supreme, Wyden-Ryan will probably have a minor impact on health spending.”

“But in urban areas, where insurers can play competing hospitals against each other to keep prices down, competitive bidding is likely to work, and work big. A demonstration project by the City of Denver in the late Nineties found that competitive bidding saved between 25 and 38 percent, compared to traditional Medicare.”

“So yes, competition works. But you need it on both sides of the equation. Wyden-Ryan will bring competition to health plans. We then need to work on bringing competition to hospitals, by addressing the laws and regulations that protect dinosaur incumbent general hospitals at the expense of innovative, specialized entrepreneurs.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/12/17/why-wyden-ryan-is-a-game-changer-on-medicare-reform/

Bill Hedges of MO 9:48PM December 19, 2011