Summary: Today, Americans strongly feel the need for adequate medical care among all citizens. The government has to make health care accessible and affordable in order to create an equality throughout the country, when it comes to visiting the doctor, or the entire situation becomes a major issue. The government spent nearly $420 billion on Medicare in 2006 and experts are agreeing that because of increasing costs and population they will run out of money unless changes are made. Medicare helps to aid with hospital expenses. It can help pay for hospital nursing care, where the patient must pay first out of their own pockets, and then Medicare covers the remaining expenses; also Medicare covers 80 percent of doctors' fees, laboratory tests, and other medical expenses for each beneficiary. As of 2008 doctors that treat Medicare patients faced cuts of 5 to 10 percent in their reimbursements form the federal government. As of now Medicare dictates that doctors get paid based on quantity rather than quality of their work. Therefore, in late 2006 legislators passed "pay-for-performance" which is a system that allows Medicare to pay a 1.5 percent bonus to all doctors that provide information about the quality of their services. This way doctors will be getting paid for giving patients the right diagnoses and treatment instead of them making money off of lousy treatment/prescriptions and patients having to come back for a re-evaluation. By encouraging better services legislators are hoping to increase Medicare customers and create a steady supply of customers. This way more people will be demanding Medicare and the cost can be lowered. One side of the debate over "pay-for-performance" establishes that it will promote better communication between patients and their doctors, the best hospitals will get better recognition, and it will point out that insurance and medical associations are successful because of quality as well. On the other hand, non supporters of the new system say that federal officials are not equipped to set the standards of the medical field. Some feel that it will offend the professionals education and judgement. It's also argued that the 1.5 percent bonus is not a substantial enough amount and doctors should be providing quality care at all times.
Opinion: The idea of ensuring a more vital health care process is definitely a step in the right direction. First of all I think that all people should have the right to acquire some form of health care. Granted lower income patients may not receive as much as higher income patients, but with that being said they should both get some or a certain type of financial aid. I also think that by providing a more quality based medical system would be very beneficial to people that visit doctors frequently. It makes me sick thinking that a professional doctor would write the wrong prescription to have the person pay more money to come back for another. The system would make customers feel better about their evaluations and the doctors would take pride in their work. The physicians that were already working based on quality and not quantity would be gaining money to keep doing what they had been doing, therefore it would be a win all around. Once people got service that they knew they could rely and depend on, I think that they would be more willing to pay for Medicare, that way with the increase in purchases, the cost of Medicare and Health care in general could be lowered in the long run. Overall, the decrease in the number of deaths, the better patient to doctor communication, the quality work, increase in pay for doctors doing good, and decrease in pay for health care makes the "pay-for-performance" a system of value. Uwe E. Reinhardt is an economist professor at Princeton and he agrees that "pay-for-performance is the way we should be headed, along with making headway in other aspects of health care as well.
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