Paul Ryan presses for Medicare deal’s passage

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is touting a bipartisan deal to avert payment cuts to doctors under Medicare as a step toward larger reforms of the program. 

{mosads}”Medicare is going broke, but this week we have a chance to start fixing it,” Ryan wrote in an op-ed Wednesday in the Washington Examiner. “And we can do it — with bipartisan support — by repealing a clumsy payment system that has threatened seniors’ access to care and vexed Congress for nearly two decades.”

{mosads}The deal negotiated by House leaders in both parties would repeal automatic cuts to doctors under Medicare known as the Sustainable Growth Rate. The deal has gained support on both sides of the aisle in the House and is expected to pass Thursday. 

Some Senate Democrats have raised objections, including to measures making wealthier seniors pay more to help make up the cost of the bill. Ryan, however, argues these changes are positive reforms. 

The bill would make seniors making more than $133,000 a year pay a higher share of premiums. “We’d ask the wealthy to contribute more to their care — something we have called for in the House Republican budget for years,” Ryan writes. 

It would also establish a $147 deductible for certain supplemental “Medigap” plans. “These plans insulate people from costs and, experts believe, encourage the overuse of healthcare,” Ryan writes. “Beginning in 2020, this agreement would prohibit Medigap plans from covering the first $147 of out-of-pocket spending, so cost is once again a consideration in healthcare decisions.”

The bill would also takes steps to move payment toward incentivizing quality over quantity in care, which Ryan calls “a firm step in the right direction.”

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has also portrayed the bill as part of larger entitlement reform, calling the measure “the first real, structural entitlement reform in nearly two decades.”

“The truth is, the real threat to Medicare is in the long term,” Ryan writes. “That’s why we need these structural reforms. Together, they would provide big savings to taxpayers that would grow even bigger over the long term.”