Kidney Care Community Voices Support for President's Proposal to Extend
Medicare's Secondary Payer (MSP), Urges Administration to Work Closely with
Community if Bundled Payment is Implemented
Kidney Community Sees MSP Extension as Positive Move to Benefit Patients,
Taxpayers and Medicare ESRD Benefit
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --- In response to the President's
2009 Budget Proposal, Kidney Care Partners (KCP) -- an alliance of patient
advocates, dialysis professionals, care providers and manufacturers working
together to improve quality of care for individuals with kidney disease and
kidney failure -- strongly endorses extending patients' right to remain with
their commercial insurance coverage for an additional time period if they
choose to do so. KCP also expressed support for the Administration's efforts
to align the payment systems between hospital-based and free standing
facilities.
Further, if the Administration does move forward on implementing a bundled
payment system, KCP urges the Administration to work closely with the kidney
community to ensure that the new system protects quality patient care and the
integrity of the ESRD benefit. It is critically important that any savings
recognized from these proposals be put directly back into the Medicare ESRD
program, which MedPAC consistently recognizes is underfunded. These savings
should be used to provide patient education services, establish a quality
initiative, and implement an annual inflation update mechanism for ESRD
providers who are the only Medicare providers under a prospective payment
system without such an update.
Under the current Medicare MSP provision, Medicare takes over as primary
coverage after 30 months. KCP believes an MSP extension must be part of
Medicare ESRD program reforms and the savings generated by this extension can
help support those reforms. "Despite what some large corporations are saying,
this extension impacts a modest number of patients spread across a much larger
population and would be a huge benefit to patients and the Medicare benefit,
so I salute the President for recognizing the value this extension will
provide," said Dr. Ed. Jones, a practicing nephrologist and Chair of KCP. "An
extension of the MSP provision gives some patients with private insurance a
choice in their healthcare coverage. Further, KCP believes extending this
provision will encourage large health plans to focus more heavily on disease
prevention, address co-morbidities and encourage use of fistulas in the
future."
KCP recognizes that bundling of payment is inevitable for the Medicare
dialysis benefit, though stresses caution over the importance of being
especially attentive to the details so that the benefit is not disrupted in
any way. "Resources taken out of a Medicare payment rate that many policy
experts and third-party entities such as MedPAC regard as already underfunded
would only have a negative impact on care," added Dr. Jones. "KCP urges the
Administration to involve the community if a bundled payment system is
developed in order to ensure that there are no unexpected or unanticipated
consequences to patients. Rather, savings should be put back into the system
in the form of disease prevention and education initiatives, quality payments
and an inflationary update."
KCP looks forward to working with the Administration and Congress on these
critical initiatives that are so important to Americans with kidney failure
who rely on the ESRD benefit for quality of life and quality of care.
SOURCE Kidney Care Partners
Jenn Lawson, +1-703-548-0019, for Kidney Care Partners
