The New Health Dialogue

This morning a group of 11 freshman Democrat Senators introduced “The Freshmen Value and Innovation Package.” The series of amendments to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is designed to strengthen the legislation’s payment and delivery system reforms helping to bend the cost curve and make our health care system sustainable.

We'll post the legislative language of the amendments when it becomes available. Here's a section-by-section summary and a quick rundown of the proposed reforms:

• The first section contains provisions aimed at improving quality and value through delivery system reforms in Medicaid and Medicare. This section ramps up the bill’s pay-for-performance provisions, expands the scope of Medicare’s pilot program on payment bundling, and provides HHS with great flexibility for promoting the creation of accountable care organizations.
• The second section focuses on promoting transparency and competition, expanding the scope of the Independent Medicare Advisory Board to look at total health system spending and make nonbinding, system-wide recommendations.
• The third section contains reforms aimed at promoting accountability and responsibility. This includes efforts to promote administrative simplification, reduce health care fraud, and eliminate legal barriers to improve the quality of care.