Budget Hawks, Health Care Advocates Come Together Around Smart Health Care Savings

PRESS RELEASE

September 12, 2013

Budget Hawks, Health Care Advocates Come Together Around Smart Health Care Savings

WASHINGTON, DC –The Moment of Truth Project, the budget group co-chaired by Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson, and the National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC), a coalition of health care stakeholders, released a joint paper outlining possible policy options designed to achieve real Medicare savings through better care at a briefing on Capitol Hill today.

“This paper demonstrates that good health policy and good budgetary policy can be one in the same,” said Ed Lorenzen, Executive Director of The Moment of Truth Project. “These bipartisan reforms could both achieve savings in the Medicare program and help advance quality and efficiency improvements across our health care system.”

Today’s briefing featured a presentation from Lorenzen and NCHC President and CEO John Rother as well as a a panel discussion with Keith Fontenot of the Brookings Institution and Katharine Hays of the Bipartisan Policy Center.  The event was moderated by Washington Post health care reporter Sarah Kliff.

According to Rother, “For all the disagreements elsewhere in health policy, our analysis found that consensus has formed around three bipartisan approaches that curb costs while improving care… pay providers for value over volume, promote care coordination and inject competition into our health care system.”

Building on previous work on delivery and payment reform from both organizations as well as a number of other recent budget and health care proposals, the paper examines several proposed reforms to health care delivery and payment in detail and explores options to ensure those reforms can produce scoreable budgetary savings.

A summary and a link to the full report can be found on NCHC’s website at http://www.nchc.org/2287-2/

And on the Moment of Truth Project’s website at: http://www.momentoftruthproject.org/publications/achieving-real-savings-through-better-care-policy-options-improving-care-and-slowing-co

Document: CRFB NCHC Smart Savings Briefing