Congress Eyes First Medicare Doctor Pay Overhaul in Over a Decade — SkimNews
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- Congress is considering the first major overhaul of how Medicare pays doctors in more than a decade, with both Democrats and Republicans appearing to agree on the outlines of the approach.
- The proposed policy would link Medicare's doctor pay rates to a medical inflation measure, giving physicians guaranteed pay boosts similar to those hospitals and other parts of the healthcare system already receive.
- The shift would mark a retreat from the decades-long idea that Medicare can control how many services physicians provide on a national basis — a notion that has undergirded doctor payments for years.
- The overhaul would also reduce the government's push toward value-based care, the model that pays clinicians more for keeping patients healthy.
Why it matters: If enacted, the reform would abandon Medicare's decades-long volume-control model for physicians and move doctors onto inflation-adjusted guaranteed raises — the same payment structure hospitals already get — while deprioritizing value-based care. Doctors gain payment certainty; the federal government gives up its lever to control national service volume.
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