Medicare drug payments

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 [...]