I keep hearing that this new law will be paid for through ending waste, fraud and abuse in our health care system. What does that mean?
According to the non-partisan experts at the Congressional Budget Office, because of this new law, over the next ten years, our national deficit will decrease by $143 billion, and up to $1.2 trillion in the following ten years. Those savings come from a number of cost-containment provisions. A major one is reimbursing physicians based on the quality of care they provide rather than the quantity of care. This is called value-based health care purchasing and it will help reward some of the high-quality care provided by hospitals and medical groups around Wisconsin such as the Marshfield Clinic, Gundersen Lutheran and Franciscan Skemp. Hospitals will be held accountable to reduce preventable hospital readmissions and preventable health care acquired infections. Increasingly, their payments will be linked to improving their quality and the outcomes of their care. Physicians will also be paid based on quality of care and not on the volume of services they provide. This will curb the orderin
