The House Is Improving Medicare, and the Senate Can Make It Even Better

[Geee]

Heritage Foundation:

The House of Representatives has passed a short, but significant, 31-page Medicare bill, Helping Hospitals Improve Patient Care Act (H.R. 5273).

 

The House measure would improve traditional Medicare in a number of ways, though most of these would be technical changes to current law.

 

Because the bill was largely noncontroversial and thus enacted under a special procedure (“suspension of the rules”), there were no floor amendments. The House could have done more, however, such as lifting the Obamacare restrictions on the provision of patient care in high-performing physician-owned hospitals. But the Senate could easily remedy that deficiency.

 

Though most of the House changes are technical, they are consequential. For example, under Title I, which deals directly with Medicare Part A, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services would be required to apply coding for 10 surgical procedures for outpatient as well as inpatient care.