Senate Healthcare Bill (pgs. 81-100): Focus on the Elderly

Pages 81-100 of the proposed Senate Healthcare Bill focus on Medicare. This proves that Medicare has some major flaws to be fixed. However, does this bill fix the many problems of Medicare? Let us look at the summary.

Pages 81-83 focus upon quality reporting measures on Medicare. One of the main problems of Medicare is that records have not been kept properly for decades. It is better to start now than to never start at all. Page 84 provides an incentive to hospitals. The top 25% of hospitals with the least amount of Medicare patients having complications after surgery would receive 99% of the applicable Medicare payments from the government. This is the wrong way to give incentives to hospitals because the hospitals and the doctors cannot prevent a patient from having complications after surgery. This incentive would put the elderly in a precarious situation because the hospitals will then look to push the Medicare patients out of the hospital as quickly as possible. Pages 85-87 talk about a national strategy to improve health care quality. The improvement strategy would be implemented by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. This plan would force hospitals to conform to a set of guidelines set up by the HHS that possibly will not help the elderly. Every person is unique and every person's health condition will not always fall within a preconditioned set of guidelines. Pages 88-90 have more incentives set up for healthcare providers that provide Medicare efficiently. Any healthcare provider who avoids to take at-risk Medicare patients will be sanctioned by the Secretary of HHS. That would give the Secretary of HHS the authority to stick it to healthcare providers that go against her agenda. Some healthcare providers could possibly go out of business. The predicament becomes even murkier for healthcare providers on pages 91 and 92. There would be a new Innovation Center that would evaluate how Medicare healthcare providers operate. This center would be given the authority to terminate or restructure the payment models of healthcare providers. This center would cut into the profits of healthcare providers who are not efficient. Pages 93-96 talks about a new program called the National Pilot Program on Payment Bundling. The Medicare provider receives payment now from the government that covers the cost of the Medicare patient's hospital stay plus thirty days after discharge individually. Instead of paying case-by-case, the federal government would pay the providers a bundled amount predetermined by HHS. Healthcare providers would no longer be penalized for patient readmissions. The new program would cut down on senseless paperwork. Pages 97-98 talk about the new readmission policy. Starting in 2013, hospitals with readmission rates above a certain threshold will receive a 20% penalty of what the first admission was if the patient is readmitted 7 days after discharge and 10% if the patient is readmitted 15 days after discharge. Hospitals in the top 25% for having the most readmissions would be subject to this policy. This policy seems to force the hospitals not to discharge Medicare patients too early. However, this could force some hospitals not to readmit Medicare patients for 15 days so that the hospitals would not be penalized. What this part of the bill does is force the elderly to take care of themselves. Pages 99-100 prove this point. A new program would be set up that is called the Community Care Transitions Program. Hospitals that are the top 25% for readmissions would receive funding to reduce readmissions by setting up this program. The people within this new program would meet with the Medicare patient 24 hours before the discharge time to show the patient self-management support skills. Therefore, Medicare will become worse, forcing the elderly to take care of themselves. It's not a death panel, but placing the blame of sickness upon elderly people is shameful.