Congress has finally concluded its monthslong saga to raise the debt ceiling. Whatever one thinks of the deal struck, the overall outlook for our nation’s fiscal health remains grim. Lawmakers explicitly took the most expensive items — federal health and entitlement programs — off the table. At some point, Congress will be forced to deal with this core problem. When it does, it should look to reducing overpayments in the Medicare program. Taxpayers and seniors would both benefit.
As the largest single payer of medical services, Medicare greatly influences the rest of the health-care system. Sometimes these effects are hard to detect, but one very concrete example is “site-of-service differentials” in reimbursement. Simply put, this is when Medicare pays higher amounts for the same service based just on where it was provided.
