[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16062]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         GEOGRAPHIC DISPARITIES

  (Mr. WALZ asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WALZ. Madam Speaker, reforming Medicare formulas so that they 
reward quality and value is one of the changes that must be part of any 
discussion on health care reform.
  The Congressional Budget Office recognizes the problem of a simple 
fee-for-service payment system regardless of the quality of care our 
patients receive. That means we pay doctors for doing more tests and 
ineffective treatments.
  In my home district of southern Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic is a model 
of providing high quality care at low prices. But because of the way 
Medicare payments are figured today, the Mayo Clinic is penalized for 
that. We must reward those that save money and at the same time provide 
the highest quality of care. This can be done by creating an index 
within the Medicare physician fee formula to simply measure quality.
  I urge my colleagues to support the inclusion of this sort of 
provision in the final health care reform package.

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