To Shop Smart, Patients Need to Know Price of Care: Peter Orszag
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Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Over the past few years, the growthin health-care costs has quietly been slowing down. Naturally,we’d like to make this trend last. That means we’ll need toavoid betting big on just one strategy.
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office reported thatmany Medicare pilot projects that were designed to reduce costsactually haven’t done so. But the CBO suggested there may bepromise in a “bundled-payment” approach, under which insurerspay a single comprehensive fee for treating a particulardisease, rather than many fees for specific doctor visits andtherapies. The health-care law includes provisions to expandbundled payments, and they should be aggressively adopted.