Health Affairs blog today posted an article about the new rules CMS released on Wednesday that would establish key parameters for the new Quality Payment Program, a framework that includes the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Alternative Payment Models (APMs). These policies were established by the latest, permanent ‘doc fix,’ the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).

My writing this morning is not about the proposed rule, the Quality Payment Program, the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), or the Alternative Payment Models (APM’s).

But rather, it is about something I first encountered during my first MHA class on Health Care Quality. Reading the assigned readings in the one textbook we were given, I noticed that throughout the last several decades, CMS has released and created many rules, programs, models, and whatnot, that made my head spin. No doubt that is what the good folks at CMS intended, because these rules, programs, models, schemes and “solutions” have only seemed to make the American health care system more complex, confusing, bureaucratic, wasteful, idiotic, and expensive.

When supporters of the current challenger in the Democratic Party presidential primaries say that their candidate will give them free health care, do they really understand and realize how much of a house of cards the entire system is, and one that will collapse if given enough time?

How so, you ask? Well, if you know of any other human-devised system that is so top-heavy, so convoluted, and so complex that the sheer weight of its rules, regulations, laws, programs and models will cause it to collapse, let me know, because the US health care system is the only one I see.

What those who advocate Medicare for All don’t realize (I am one too, but I realize what is at stake), is that even with all of this complexity, people are profiting from the ever continuing releasing of proposed rules, programs and models, and that to simply do away with them is equally as bad as letting it collapse, but at least when it does collapse, we can start all over again and provide the single payer system they want.

Yet, if we scrape it now, those who just got health coverage will lose it, those who never had it will never be able to afford it, and the entities that profit from it will work day and night to prevent the scraping of their “golden goose”.

I don’t have all the answers, but I know this, too many rules, programs, incentives, models, schemes, etc, etc, and so forth, only makes things worse, not better. I don’t remember learning about other nations’ health care systems being so top-heavy and so complex, and maybe, in the final analysis, is why their systems work, and ours does not.

When an American citizen goes abroad and needs medical care in a country such as France (I read one person’s account of what they experienced), the bill they received after treatment was only a few dollars, not hundreds or thousands. Why is that? Maybe because they don’t have a CMS screwing it up.

Maybe it’s because their doctors don’t wave expensive watches in the faces of their patients, or describe their recent safaris where they shot some endangered species in Africa because they were wealthy and believe they have the right to do so, as a Midwestern dentist did last year to a prized lion.

I also remember that during the run-up to the enactment of the ACA, many senior citizens demanded that the government keep its hands off of their Medicaid, and that they did not want some government bureaucrat to make health care decisions for them and their families. Who do they think makes these decisions in health insurance companies? Do they know any corporate “bureaucrats”, or do they think that because they work for a private company, that they are not part of a bureaucracy?

I’ll end this philippic here, but it makes me wonder why we haven’t gotten wise to the fact that too many cooks, too many rules, etc., only make things worse, not better. We need to wake up and join the rest of the industrialized world.

---

I am willing to work with any broker, carrier, or employer interested in saving money on expensive surgeries, and to provide the best care for their injured workers or their client’s employees.

Ask me any questions you may have on how to save money on expensive surgeries under workers’ comp.

I am also looking for a partner who shares my vision of global health care for injured workers.

I am also willing to work with any health care provider, medical tourism facilitator or facility to help you take advantage of a market segment treating workers injured on the job. Workers’ compensation is going through dramatic changes, and may one day be folded into general health care. Injured workers needing surgery for compensable injuries will need to seek alternatives that provide quality medical care at lower cost to their employers. Caribbean and Latin America region preferred.

Call me for more information, next steps, or connection strategies at (561) 738-0458 or (561) 603-1685, cell. Email me at: richard_krasner@hotmail.com.

Will accept invitations to speak or attend conferences.

Connect with me on LinkedIn, check out my website, FutureComp Consulting, and follow my blog at: richardkrasner.wordpress.com.

Transforming Workers’ Blog is now viewed all over the world in 250 countries and political entities. I have published nearly 300 articles, many of them re-published in newsletters and other blogs.

Share this article, or leave a comment below.