Issue #2: Ensuring Quality Care for Medicare Patients

   Medicare is a health care benefit for disabled persons 65 and older. Medicaid was created for the 38 million Americans who have a low income.They were created in the hope that all Americans can have adequate health care. In that effort, the government is planning on reducing the Medicare costs by $70 billion. For starters, the doctors who treat Medicare will lose a 5 to 10 percent cut on their government reimbursments. Doctors get paid baised on quantity rather than quality of work. This means that if they see many patients in one day, regardless of the quality of the diagnosis they recieve, they still get paid well. The government created legislation that will help ensure people in America get proper attention and diagnosis from said doctors. The doctors follow a pay-for-performance system. Over time, superior doctors and hospitals that follow the system well will recieve bonuses. People who oppose this bill think that the government undermines the doctors and hospitals judgement. They say that doctors are expected to provide quality care at all times, and shouldn't be given bonuses to do so.

   
I think that doctors shouldn't be given bonuses for the quality of work they provide. Sure it would be nice to help the doctors who do that all the time, but isn't that what a doctor is supposed to do? They are supposed to help every person as best as humanly possible, and they should't be given a prize as to who can do it best. Certain doctors may take advantage of this law, and then it will all have been a waste. Every doctor at anytime should be putting their best effort into every one of their patients and putting a prize above their heads will cloud their judgements.Sylvia Brandt, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, believes that doctors do not need any additional monetary incentive to do the best they can, and monetary incentives could have perverse consequences.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/hearing/2009/07/against_physician_pay-for-perf.html

Issue #1:Comprehensive vs. Incremental Health Care Reform

Issue #3:Safe to Eat?