Congress Waters Down Health Care Reform Provisions - TIME

Congress Waters Down Health Care Reform Provisions - TIME: "Pretty much everyone agrees that the health care legislation now making its way through both houses of Congress would do some things well. It would cover almost all of the roughly 33 million legal residents of this country who now lack health insurance. And a vast expansion of Medicaid, coupled with billions of dollars in subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans buy insurance, would help ensure that most people end up spending less on their health bills, according to a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Congress's independent scorekeepers. (See 10 players in health-care reform.)

But what about President Obama's pledge to pass a measure that reins in the larger forces driving up health care costs? Or his vow that a reformed system would deliver more-efficient care, with better results for patients? That's where the legislation could fall well short of the promises.

In a recent letter to Obama, 23 prominent economists identified four provisions that they said 'can go a long way toward delivering better health care, and better value, to Americans.' They are: ensuring that reform doesn't add to the federal deficit; creating an independent commission to bring Medicare costs under control; discouraging high-cost insurance plans by taxing them; and changing the incentives in medicine so that doctors and hospitals are paid not for how much treatment they give but for how well it works."