Medicare Should Pay for Patients, Not Treatments

Washington should take steps to encourage the recent deceleration in U.S. health-care costs, and two new bipartisan plans (one from the Brookings Institution and the other from the Bipartisan Policy Center) may point policymakers in the right direction, writes former director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag in a Bloomberg column.

In particular, Orszag advocates for the Medicare Comprehensive Care payment reform, where health-care providers would receive a fixed payment for each patient/beneficiary, rather than being paid for each test or procedure.