Yesterday, the Health Care Quality and Cost Council’s Cost Containment Committee met to discuss their recommendations for the “Roadmap to Cost Containment.” Yesterday’s meeting also included a quick overview of one of the QCC’s more heavily discussed topics: rate-setting. The DHCFP modeled the projected cost savings of a two-year rate freeze for provider rates or a two-year freeze of health care premiums for the commercial insurance market. The savings were in the $2 billion dollar range for each rate freeze. Unfortunately, the modeling did not include the effect, and pros and cons, of doing both simultaneously. Jim Conway asked if the QCC, or another entity, could ask for a voluntary rate freeze until 2012 given the current economic times before the meeting shifted to discussion of the Roadmap.
The remainder of the meeting was spent discussing the summary of the Roadmap, which will be voted on by the full QCC on September 30th. The Roadmap will incorporate recommendations from the Special Commission on the Health Care Payment System (see our blog here on their final report) and the RAND report on cost containment initiatives (see our blog here). The summary includes several recommendations that are intended to complement a the payment reform overhaul: increased use of pay-for-performance, adoption of wide-spread health information technology, administrative simplification, using bundled payments, reducing reimbursements for potentially preventable readmissions, creating medical homes, establishment of a comparative effectiveness board, utilizing value-based benefit design, having robust health resource planning, modifying our medical malpractice and peer review laws, and offering enhanced consumer engagement on the broad and individual level.
There was limited discussion about the recommendations, and some clarifications, but most members of the Cost Containment Committee approved the recommendations. The most vocal in the room were Jim Conway, who asked for reframing and a focus on “health delivery system redesign,” Dolores Mitchell, who asked that they be strong in their recommendations, and Gregory Sullivan, who asked that they strengthen the rate-setting authority so that there is some pressure to keep the costs contained if the market forces prove unsuccessful.
We look forward to the final recommendations and their implementation.
-Georgia Maheras
