Must-Read: Richard Mayhew: Medicare Reimbursement, Public Options and Medicare Buy-In

Must-Read: Richard Mayhew: Medicare Reimbursement, Public Options and Medicare Buy-In: “There has been a flurry of liberal health wonk reform proposals this week…

…@HuffPostPol: Clinton formally endorses public option and Medicare for under-55s by @citizencohn http://huff.to/29vZ1Td

…I want to see details just exactly what is meant by the Clinton proposal as it can range from aggressive administrative action small ball (as we talked about in February) to another whack at the legislative pinata…. But before I do a long wonk dive, I just want to re-iterate a very simple point. Most liberal health policy goals have a very simple summary: get more people on insurance that pays providers rates that are closer to Medicare rates than commercial large group rates. Large group rates pay providers between 40% and 100% more than Medicare for physical health service. Moving the entire employer sponsored coverage universe to paying Medicare like rates would knock 30% off of the current bill. We see this in Exchange…. Plans that are profitable tend to be paying providers Medicare plus a little bit while offering narrow networks. We see this in the proposal to move the Medicare buy-in age to 55. We see this in the proposal to have a public option…. All of these efforts are just different ways to achieve an underlying goal of reducing provider compensation by lowering the average payment per service by having more people move from high payment to provider coverage to Medicare based pricing. Everything else is details. Those details matter a lot, but the core policy thrust is fairly simple.