Medicare's Sustainable Growth Rate Was Not Entirely Bad

Supported by health-care interests, Medicare beneficiaries, and an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in Congress, President Obama has signed a law that will change how Medicare pays doctors — for the worse. Critics note the law will dramatically increase federal control of medicine and add $141 billion in deficits through 2025, a violation of Republican and Democratic pledges made since 2010.

The old system, called the Sustainable Growth Rate, was hardly perfect. In fact, in over a decade of working in health policy, I have never heard one person say anything good about it. Now that it is dead, it is time to give the SGR a fitting eulogy — to bury it, but also, for once, to praise it. Whatever its flaws, the SGR was this nation’s only attempt to connect the cost of an entitlement to our ability to afford it.

Read the entire entry at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.