The One Billion Dollar Innovation Reward

A new program called the  Health Care Innovation Challenge is being  offered by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid and will award up to $1 billion in grants for efforts to improve care and lower costs for patients with public coverage.   This could go to physicians and other health professionals, payers, local governments, community-based organizations.  This money is coming from the health system reform law that was passed.   I guess they found some leprechaun’s bucket of gold because there just seems to be a never-ending amount of money the Obama administration keeps drawing from.   Oh, wait a minute, those are my taxes.   Anyway, the program really has no hard guidelines that I can tell and they have even said, “If your idea works, come to us. We’ll support that idea.”  Okay so here is our chance.  What do you think should be done to “improve care and lower costs for patients on public coverage”?

My thoughts so far:

  1. Define “improve”.  This is not so easy.  Quality metrics are bogus.
  2. Pay more to PCPs so that there are more around to even see patients.
  3. Fire 80% of all administrators in the healthcare system
  4. Decrease the ridiculous laws and mandates that make it necessary to hire the idiots  in #3.
  5. Pay more for Medicaid visits.   More doctors will see Medicaid patients which will lower ER visits, hospitalizations, and total cost in the long run.

What else do you have?