Trump Administration Weighs Overhaul of Doctor Payments in Medicare

By <name>/u/EmotionalEmetic</name><uri>https://old.reddit.com/user/EmotionalEmetic</uri>

See link: https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/medicare/122383 Some parts paraphrased below "The request for information issued on July 14 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) noted that the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) coding system, on which the Medicare reimbursement program is based, is owned by the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA assigns a CPT code to each service and procedure and then collects its own data to develop recommendations for CMS on how much each CPT code should be worth. "There has ... been longstanding concern expressed over the federal reliance on a private organization with such an obvious conflict of interest as providing information on the time and resource requirements to conduct physician services when this information may influence their own payment," the authors of the request stated. ... "This issue is part of a broader conversation about the way different types of care are valued under Medicare's current payment system," he wrote. "Primary care physicians tend to be paid less overall than specialty physicians under Medicare, and some of that has to do with the fact that medical procedures (such as surgeries or tests) are easier to code and bill for under this type of coding system, compared to things like patient education or care coordination that make up a larger share of primary care work." ... David Glaser, an attorney with the Fredrikson & Byron law firm in Minneapolis, said the idea of possibly getting rid of CPT codes "is a major thing," and not necessarily a good idea. "When you have a system, even when it's flawed and everyone agreed it's flawed, that doesn't mean change is a good thing," he said in a phone interview. "Love it or hate it, CPT is very ingrained in our system," he said. And although you could always come up with a better system, "does that make it wise to come up with a new system here? It seems to me like it would be quite an earth-shattering thing to start again."

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