What patients pay: Dr. Don Berwick and Jim Capretta debate shifting health care costs

Already there’s a growing trend in health care to move more of the cost of care onto patients in an effort to make them think twice about what they need and how to protect and their financial interest. In Massachusetts, for example, enrollment in limited or tiered health plans is on the rise. Such plans offer cheaper premiums but penalize people for using providers thought to be higher cost.
Dr. Don Berwick, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, and Jim Capretta, who serviced as associate director at the White House Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush, took sharply different stances on what shifting costs to patients could mean during a wide-ranging debate last night hosted by the Pioneer Institute.

Berwick, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, called the idea of giving patients more “skin in the game” a “vicious idea.”

“Most people do not use health care as a recreational good,” he said.

http://www.boston.com/Boston/whitecoatnotes/2012/04/what-patients-pay-don-berwick-and-jim-capretta-debate-shifting-health-care-costs/ecIrKifQiqwTsiQfYweZ5K/index.html

Grassley, Kohl push Medicare on Sunshine Act

Sens. Chuck Grassley and Herb Kohl push the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to issue its final ruling on implementation no later than June. Is that enough time for medical device and pharmaceutical companies to prepare?

A bipartisan duo in the U.S. Senate is again pushing the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to finalize the Sunshine Act, which requires medical device and pharmaceutical companies to file detailed reports on payments and gifts to physicians and other health care providers.
In an April 4 letter to CMS chief Marilyn Tavenner, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) said they're disappointed that CMS blew the October 2011 deadline for implementing the Sunshine Act.
"We request that the final rule on implementation be released no later than June of this year so that partial data collection for 2012 can commence," the senators wrote (PDF). "We also strongly urge CMS to work closely with stakeholders to finalize these rules to that they comprise a feasible approach to providing the valuable data that patients deserve."

for entire article,
http://www.massdevice.com/news/grassley-kohl-push-medicare-sunshine-act