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

Ex-Medicare chief Berwick: "The medical device industry is doing a lot to protect patients"

Erstwhile Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services chief Dr. Donald Berwick tells MassDevice.com that, despite a clutch of headline-grabbing recalls, medical device makers are doing good work for patients.

Public health pioneer and onetime Centers for Medicare & Medicaid chief Dr. Donald Berwick gave some props to the medical device industry ahead of a presentation at Harvard Medical School this week.
Despite a recent stream of high-profile recalls and the ever-present clamor among consumer groups calling for more stringent regulatory oversight, Berwick said he remains a fan of the industry.
"The medical device industry is doing a lot to protect patients," Berwick told MassDevice.com. "There are people who are alive today who wouldn't be without medical devices."

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