The health care debate is heating up in Washington, D.C., and I’m working to help Washingtonians get the coverage they deserve and ensure this care is of the highest quality at the lowest cost.
As a nation we spend too much on health care and get too little in return, leaving businesses and families with outrageous bills and eroding benefits, and leaving our country with exploding deficits. We need to focus on fixing what’s broken and building on what works.
Working closely with many Washingtonians, I introduced the Medical Efficiency and Delivery Improvement of Care (MEDIC) Act to address three specific areas of health care reform: reforming Medicare’s pay structure so that it rewards quality of care, not quantity of care, as in the current structure; developing long-term care services and programs to provide patients with options and alternatives to nursing homes; and increasing the number of practicing primary care doctors to ensure coordinated care for patients.
The MEDIC Act includes the following proposals:
Medicare payment improvement
For years our state has been penalized under Medicare for providing some of the highest quality care in the nation for lower costs. My plan would provide incentives when providers administer low-cost, high-quality care, and pair it with a new physician payment component that rewards quality, not quantity, of services.
Preserving patient access to primary care
If patients don’t have access to quality doctors, no health insurance plan is going to be enough. Experts estimate that by 2020 we will need 40 percent more practicing primary care physicians to meet patient demand. My plan adopts long overdue reforms to improve pay levels for primary care providers who provide integrated care coordination.
Delivering home and community-based services
Current law prevents people from accessing long-term care information and services until they have depleted their entire life savings and become poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. By then, it is often too late to provide cost-effective home care, and people end up being forced into nursing homes too soon. My proposal would help people stay in their own homes longer, and avoid using Medicaid, with healthier results for patients.
I believe that with the MEDIC Act, we can achieve our goals of improving the health care workforce, stabilizing the physician payment structure, improving access to care, and decreasing the financial and emotional burdens associated with long-term care while simultaneously providing significant savings throughout the health care system.
Sen. Maria Cantwell is a member of the Senate Finance Committee.
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