TheHill.com (01/18/12) Baker, Sam
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has said that programs to cut spending and improve the quality of services provided by Medicare have not been successful. Despite two decades of effort to change the Medicare program to focus on paying for better outcomes in order the save money, there has been no real progress. The CBO has examined six programs that were intended to improve the care coordination for those patients with chronic diseases and found that either the programs generated the same costs or were more expensive than the traditional system. The new healthcare law includes several programs of similar design, including the accountable care organizations, which offer similar incentives to physicians to improve quality as are offered by the programs which the CBO has found have no effect.

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