Health Care Reform: Society Expresses Concerns to Congressional Leaders

As the House and Senate work to remedy the differences between the House and Senate passed health care reform bills and continue the negotiations regarding the provisions to be included in the final version, the Heart Rhythm Society, as a member of the Alliance of Specialty Medicine, was a signatory on a January 8, 2010 letter to Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Minority Leader Mitchell McConnell (R-KY). The Alliance has also previously expressed concerns with health care reform legislation.

This letter noted appreciation for the historic opportunity to improve access to quality health care and the work of Congress to produce HR 3962, the “Affordable Health Care for America Act” and HR 3590, the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” To better understand the Society’s concerns with these provisions, please read the full letter (PDF, 240K)

Among other changes, the Alliance requested the deletion of the following provisions.

• Independent Payment Advisory Board (formally known as IMAC): This provision would create an independent Medicare Payment Advisory Board tasked with presenting Congress with comprehensive proposals to reduce excess cost growth and improve quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries. In years when Medicare costs are projected to be unsustainable, the Board’s proposals will take effect unless Congress passes an alternative measure that achieves the same level of savings.
• CMS Innovation Center: The provision would establish within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) a Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation to research, develop, test, and expand innovative payment and delivery arrangements to improve the quality and reduce the cost of care.
• Value-Based Purchasing: This provision would direct the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services [referred as the Secretary thereafter] to develop and implement a budget-neutral payment system that would adjust Medicare physician payments based on the quality and cost of the care they deliver.
• Mis-valued Physician Services: The legislation would direct the Secretary to periodically review potentially mis-valued services, such as those with fastest growth, codes that have experienced changes in practice expenses, codes for new technologies, codes that are often billed together or codes that have not been subject to review since the implementation of the Resource Based Relative Value System (i.e., Harvard-valued codes).
• Physician Compare Website: This provision will create a website where outcomes-related information of providers would be accessible to the general public.
• Hospital Readmission: This provision would penalize hospitals that have actual readmission rates higher than their Medicare-calculated expected readmission rate (on four conditions).
  

The Heart Rhythm Society will continue to closely monitor the House and Senate negotiations on health care reform and will update our members.