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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009 (10:41 AM)

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Continued from President Obama's Fiscal 2010 Budget: Transforming America's healthcare Systems

(I'm feeling determined)

Continued from above:
The Administration will accelerate access to make affordable generic biologic drugs available through the establishment of a workable regulatory, scientific, and legal pathway for generic versions of biologic drugs. In order to retain incentives for research and development for the innovation of breakthrough products, a period of exclusivity would be guaranteed for the original innovator product, which is generally consistent with the principles in the Hatch-Waxman law for traditional products.

Additionally, brand biologic manufacturers would be prohibited from reformulating existing products into new products to restart the exclusivity process, a process known as ever-greening.
Finally, the Budget will bring down the drug costs of Medicaid by increasing the Medicaid drug rebate for brand-name drugs from 15.1 percent to 22.1 percent of the Average Manufacturer Price, apply the additional rebate to new drug formulations, and allow States to collect rebates on drugs provided through Medicaid managed care organizations. All the savings would be devoted to the health care reserve fund.

Improving Medicare and Medicaid Payment Accuracy. The Government Accountability
Office (GAO) has labeled Medicare as "high risk" due to billions of dollars lost to overpayments and fraud each year. To save Medicare and Medicaid, increase quality, and make sure Medicare and Medicaid patients get the care they deserve, we need to rein in these abuses and use this money for reform. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will address vulnerabilities presented by Medicare and Medicaid, including Medicare Advantage and the prescription drug benefit (Part D). CMS will be able to respond more rapidly to emerging program integrity vulnerabilities across these programs through an increased capacity to identify excessive payments and new processes for identifying and correcting problems.

Improving Care after Hospitalizations and Reduce Hospital Readmission Rates. Nearly
18 percent of hospitalization of Medicare beneficiaries resulted in the readmission of patients who had been discharged in the hospital within the last 30 days. Sometimes the readmission could not have been prevented, but many of these readmissions are avoidable. To improve this situation, hospitals will receive bundled payments that cover not just the hospitalization, but care for certain post-acute providers the 30 days of care after the hospitalization, and hospitals with high rates of readmission will be paid less if patients are re-admitted to the hospital within the same 30-day period. This combination of incentives and penalties should lead to better care after a hospital stay and result in fewer readmissions—saving roughly $26 billion of wasted money over 10 years. The money saved will also be contributed to the reserve fund for health care reform.

Expanding the Hospital Quality Improvement Program. The health care system tends to pay for quantity of services not quality. Experts have recommended that hospitals and doctors be paid based on delivering high quality care, or what is called "pay for performance." The President’s Budget will link a portion of Medicare payments for acute in-patient hospital services to hospitals’ performance on specific quality measures. This program will improve the quality of care delivered to Medicare beneficiaries, and the higher quality will save over $12 billion over 10 years. Again, the money saved will be contributed to the Reserve Fund for health care reform.
Reforming the Physician Payment System to Improve Quality and Efficiency. The Administration believes that the current physician payment system, while it has served to limit spending to a degree, needs to be reformed so that physicians are paid for providing high-quality care rather than simply for more procedures and exams. Thus, while the baseline reflects our best estimate of what the Congress has done in recent years, we are not suggesting that should be the future policy
.
As part of health care reform, the Administration would support comprehensive, but fiscally responsible, reforms to the payment formula. The Administration believes Medicare and the country need to move toward a system in which doctors are paid for high-quality care rather than simply more care.
Reducing Itemized Deduction Rate for Families With Incomes Over $250,000. Lowering health care costs and expanding health insurance coverage will require additional revenue. In the health reform policy discussions that have taken place over the past few years, a wide range of revenue options have been discussed—and these options are all worthy of serious discussion as the Administration works with the Congress to enact health care reform. The Administration’s Budget includes a proposal to limit the tax rate at which high-income taxpayers can take itemized deductions to 28 percent— and the initial reserve fund would be funded in part through this provision. This provision would raise $318 billion over 10 years

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Posted Sep 17, 09 by tuffymuffin69 (

)
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