Five bipartisan fixes for US debt crisis

Whether in the coming weeks or later, the US s going to have to grapple with its long-term debt challenge. We at the Bipartisan Policy Center suggest these five solutions – stemming from the work of prominent leaders, Republicans and Democrats – to address US debt.

3. Reform Medicare payments to physicians

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Healthcare Cost Containment Initiative has issued comprehensive recommendations to improve the health-care delivery system and reduce cost growth. The recommendations envision a transition from volume-based, fee-for-service payment systems toward more organized, coordinated systems of care. For instance, rather than trying to accommodate most patients with a 15-minute office visit, a reformed payment system would encourage the use of email and phone calls when appropriate, and longer visits when needed.

One way that policymakers could advance the goal of changing the system in the near-term is by addressing that issue within Medicare, which provides health insurance for seniors and certain people with disabilities. Annual increases to Medicare’s physician payments could be made conditional on greater accountability for quality and value.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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