MIKE BURGESS: How To Reform Medicare Without Cutting Benefits

Thanks to Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, Washington has zeroed in on reducing inefficiencies, waste, fraud, and abuse across the government. With one program in particular drawing the interest of both sides of the aisle: Medicare.

As is par for the course, Democrats are telling the American people any Medicare reforms are tantamount to “cutting benefits.”

Enough fearmongering from the left.

As a former member of Congress and M.D., I can tell you: reforming Medicare, without touching benefits, is absolutely possible.

One way to do so is common-sense site-neutral payment reforms.

Right now all across the country, big hospital systems are buying up smaller physician practices and rebranding them as “hospital outpatient facilities” – all so they can charge two to three times more even though patients are seeing the same doctor and receiving the same service.

For example, Medicare pays $255 for an epidural injection when provided in a physician’s office, but the cost for the same injection increases to $740 when provided in a hospital-owned facility.

This defies common sense, costs patients and taxpayers more, and limits patients’ choice over time as the only clinics left will be owned by big hospitals, who will then own so much of the market they’ll have unchecked power to set exorbitant prices for patients.

Congress has been keenly aware of this problem for over a decade, yet no action has been taken to solve it.

With Washington’s renewed sense of reducing waste, it’s time for Congress to finally enact comprehensive site-neutral reforms that could save more than $150 billion