Commission Recommendations
MedPAC makes recommendations to the Congress and to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on issues affecting the administration of the Medicare program. With its recommendations, the Commission strives to improve the delivery of care, while ensuring financial stability and maximizing value for the program. After extensive analysis and evaluation, our recommendations are discussed and voted on by Commissioners in our public meetings. Recommendations are typically published in two main reports, released in March and June of each year.
| Recommendations | Topic(s) | Date |
|---|---|---|
Reconciling Medicare+Choice payments and fee-for-service spending (A)The Medicare program should be financially neutral as to whether beneficiaries enroll in Medicare+Choice plans or in the traditional Medicare program. Therefore, Congress should make Medicare payments for beneficiaries in the two sectors of a local market substantially equal, after accounting for risk. |
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March 2001 |
Reconciling Medicare+Choice payments and fee-for-service spending (B)The Secretary should study variation in spending under the traditional Medicare program to determine how much is caused by differences in input prices and health risk and how much is caused by differences in provider practice patterns, the availability of providers and services, and beneficiary preferences. He should report to the Congress and make recommendations… Read more » |
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March 2001 |
Reconciling Medicare+Choice payments and fee-for-service spending (C)The Secretary should study how beneficiaries, providers, and insurers each benefit from the additional Medicare+Choice payments made in floor counties. |
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March 2001 |
Reconciling Medicare+Choice payments and fee-for-service spending (D)In defining local payment areas, the Secretary should explore using areas that contain sufficient numbers of Medicare beneficiaries to produce reliable estimates of spending and risk. |
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March 2001 |
Reducing beneficiary coinsurance under the hospital outpatient prospective payment systemsCongress should continue the reduction in outpatient coinsurance to achieve a 20 percent coinsurance rate by 2010. |
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March 2001 |
Treatment of the initial residency period in Medicare’s direct graduate medical education paymentsThe Congress should eliminate the weighting factors that currently determine Medicare’s direct graduate medical education payments and count all residencies equally through completion of residents’ first specialty or combined program and subspecialty if one is pursued. Residents training longer than the minimum number of years required for board eligibility in a specialty, combined program, or… Read more » |
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March 2001 |
Updating payments for physician services and for care provided in hospital outpatient departments (A)The Congress should replace the sustainable growth rate system with an annual update based on factors influencing the unit costs of efficiently providing physician services. |
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March 2001 |
Updating payments for physician services and for care provided in hospital outpatient departments (B)In implementing the update for physician services, the Congress should require the Health Care Financing Administration to use a forecast of the change in input prices. |
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March 2001 |
Updating payments for physician services and for care provided in hospital outpatient departments (C)The Secretary should not use an expenditure target to update the conversion factor in the outpatient prospective payment system or to update payments for other ambulatory care settings. |
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March 2001 |
Updating payments for physician services and for care provided in hospital outpatient departments (D)The Congress should require an annual update of the conversion factor in the outpatient prospective payment system that is based on the relevant factors influencing the costs of efficiently providing hospital outpatient care, and not just the change in input prices. |
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March 2001 |