Whitehouse Holds Hearing Highlighting How Strengthening Primary Care Would Improve Patient Health, Reduce Costs
Senator releases discussion draft to strengthen primary care under Medicare
Washington, D.C.—Yesterday, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, held a hearing titled “How Primary Care Improves Health Care Efficiency,”to highlight how strengthening primary care can deliver better health care, lower costs, and improve outcomes for patients. The U.S. spends more on health care as a share of its GDP than peer countries, but U.S. life expectancy is below that of its peers—and it is falling.
At the hearing, Chairman Whitehouse introduced a discussion draft of a bill that considers polices to encourage the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to accelerate its efforts to support high-quality primary care and improve pay for primary care providers in Medicare. A fact sheet on the discussion draft is available here.
WATCH: Chairman Whitehouse delivers opening remarks
“U.S. health spending makes up 17% of GDP; as you can see, a far higher percentage than in peer nations. Yet U.S. life expectancy is below peer nations, and even falling; it’s now fallen to its lowest in two decades … Why is American health spending so inefficient? One answer is how badly we fund primary care,” said Chairman Whitehouse.
“[D]espite overwhelming evidence that primary care is associated with longer life expectancy and lower downstream health costs – the U.S. continues to spend less on primary care, as a share of total health spending, than any other peer OECD country. In fact, average primary care spending across our peer nations is nearly double ours. U.S. percentage spending on primary care actually declined from a sad 6.5% in 2002, to a woeful 4.7% in 2019. Today, three in ten Americans report not having a usual source of primary care. In some areas, often rural areas, the situation is much worse,” the Chairman continued.
“Today, I released a discussion draft of a bill tasking CMS to accelerate value-based primary care by creating hybrid payment models for Medicare primary care providers. Hybrid payments start the move away from the failed fee-for-service treadmill, by at least partially paying primary care providers based on their patient mix. These hybrid payment models reward providers who provide the best care to their patients — care that reduces patients’ emergency visits, hospitalizations, excess specialist services, and other big cost drivers — and these hybrid payment models reward patients with better health,” Chairman Whitehouse continued.
“The reforms contained in my discussion draft would help doctors deliver high-quality primary care to many more Americans; and improve their health outcomes; and lower total health care spending, because more and better primary care reduces the need for expensive specialty and hospital care. These are savings we achieve with no — none, zero — benefit cuts,” said Chairman Whitehouse.
