The Corner

Health Care

“‘Medicare for All’ Isn’t Medicare”

Robert Pozen has a very informative op-ed by that title in the Wall Street Journal today, and anyone interested in the subject should read it. An excerpt:

Medicare for All differs from Medicare in fundamental ways—with much broader coverage, no cost sharing, and fewer choices of health-care plans. . . .

Medicare for All would also replace Medicare’s current method of paying fees for services to every hospital, nursing home and other institutional provider. Instead, a new federal board would set an annual budget for each provider, which would receive one lump sum for current operations and another for capital expenditures. That board would be expressly forbidden by current Medicare for All bills from using quality metrics—which would be necessary to prevent providers from skimping on quality with lump-sum payments.

All this would force a radical change in the current business models of most hospitals and other Medicare providers.

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