Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposals to control health care spending by slashing the federal government’s contribution to Medicare and Medicaid and shifting that spending on to future retirees or the states, has dominated Washington’s conversation about entitlement reform.
But on Thursday morning, a group of health care economists and former Obama administration officials laid out an alternative approach that could achieve health savings by encouraging providers to deliver care more efficiently.
“Mr. Ryan has had too much running room to go out with proposals that neither will reduce overall health care costs nor will help individual beneficiaries simply because there has not been enough of an alternative put forward by those who believe that we really need to focus on the incentives and information for providers. I would challenge Mr. Ryan and others who support a premium support approach to show an analysis done by an objective entity, like the Congressional Budget Office, in which that type of approach reduced overall health care costs.” Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Obama, told ThinkProgress in an interview at the Center for American Progress.
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