U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Bill Cassidy, M.D. have introduced legislation to reform how primary care providers get paid through Medicare. Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, and Cassidy, a physician and Republican from Louisiana, introduced a bipartisan bill, the Pay PCPs Act (S. 4338), Wednesday to better support and improve pay for high-quality primary care providers.
The bill would also provide Medicare beneficiaries with reduced cost-sharing for certain primary care activities and service and would also create a new technical advisory committee to help CMS more accurately determine Fee Schedule rates. The proposed legislation would encourage CMS to accelerate its existing efforts to support value-based primary care and improve the adequacy of pay for primary care providers in Medicare, according to the lawmakers.
The bill was just introduced on May 15th, so it’s too early to tell if “has legs.” Still it shows us a workable way to grapple with some of the trick implementation issues (e.g., which services to include in the prospective payment portion; etc.)
Michigan Multipayer Initiatives 