Geographic Disparities

Floor Speech

Mr. WALZ. Madam Speaker, reforming Medicare formulas so that they reward quality and value is one of the changes that must be part of any discussion on health care reform.

The Congressional Budget Office recognizes the problem of a simple fee-for-service payment system regardless of the quality of care our patients receive. That means we pay doctors for doing more tests and ineffective treatments.

In my home district of southern Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic is a model of providing high quality care at low prices. But because of the way Medicare payments are figured today, the Mayo Clinic is penalized for that. We must reward those that save money and at the same time provide the highest quality of care. This can be done by creating an index within the Medicare physician fee formula to simply measure quality.

I urge my colleagues to support the inclusion of this sort of provision in the final health care reform package.

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