Critics Are Wrong About the Medicare Payment Board

Critics Are Wrong About the Medicare Payment Board

For Bloomberg, CFR adjunct senior fellow Peter R. Orszag responds to growing opposition to the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Created as part of the Affordable Care Act, the purpose of the board is to create a process to tweak the evolving Medicare payment system in response to incoming experience and data, allowing for more flexible testing of new payment structures than turning to Congress for legislation. Orszag states that many critics do not grasp the core rationale for the program and do not realize it will allow them to actually reach their objective of shifting away from fee-for-service payment.