Pelican State News

WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) introduced the Accountability for Long Term Medicare Solvency Act to increase transparency within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to ensure that taxpayers are getting the best value for their money. 

“Thanks to out-of-control spending, America’s Medicare program could be insolvent within a decade. Yet CMS continues to add billions of dollars in new services to be covered by Medicare without any legislative oversight to ensure that the American people are getting the best value possible. Rather than raising taxes to cover this spending spree, Congress should provide better oversight on CMS to ensure current spending is done in the best interest of the American people,” Kennedy said.  

The Accountability for Long Term Medicare Solvency Act would require the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to deliver an annual study to Congress on CMS’s processes for adding, modifying and removing service billing codes under Medicare.

The bill also requires the HHS Secretary to submit a report of each new billing code added to Medicare and its respective costs to Congress, which CMS will make publicly available on its website.  

Background

• Recent projections show that Medicare Part A could be insolvent by 2031 if Congress does not take steps to curb spending. 
• CMS spending on Medicare programs continues to grow. By 2032, the cost of Medicare is expected to double to nearly $1.9 trillion—more than the U.S. currently spends on defense.
• The increase in Medicare spending is driven largely by the addition of new products or procedures. From 1997 to 2011, 85% of real per capita spending increases were tied to newly created bill codes for treatments, procedures and services not previously covered by Medicare. New billing codes applied through CMS rulemaking increased the cost of Medicare by $6 billion in 2016, $10 billion in 2017 and $6 billion again in 2018. All this spending occurred without legislative oversight.

The text of the bill is available here.

Original source can be found here