The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met in Washington, D.C. last week to discuss various Medicare payment issues.

Among the issues discussed at MedPAC’s March meeting were:

  • Medicare beneficiary access to care in rural areas
  • skilled nursing facility value-based purchasing program and proposed replacement
  • streamlining CMS’s portfolio of alternative payment models
  • balancing efficiency with equity in Medicare Advantage benchmark policy
  • relationship between clinician services and other Medicare services
  • revising Medicare’s indirect medical education payments to better reflect teaching hospitals’ costs
  • Medicare’s vaccine coverage and payment
  • separately payable drugs in the hospital outpatient prospective payment system

MedPAC is an independent congressional agency that advises Congress on issues involving Medicare.  While its recommendations are not binding on either Congress or the administration, MedPAC is highly influential in governing circles and its recommendations often find their way into legislation, regulations, and new public policy.  Because so many patients of private safety-net hospitals are insured by Medicare, MedPAC’s deliberations are especially important to those hospitals.

Go here for links to the policy briefs and presentations that supported MedPAC’s discussion of these issues.