It's About Time

As of this past Wednesday, Medicare has stopped paying for procedures they deem to be the result of medical errors (great piece on it here). This was a long time coming. The hullabaloo around medical errors is now about a decade old, and several large private insurers in the interim realized the folly in paying doctors and hospitals to make mistakes. Glad to see the Feds followed suit.

I have a few questions though. This policy will only be effective if errors can be identified and there aren't other means the game the system. The new Medicare policy appears to hold up on the first ground (they have a list of specific things they won't pay for), but it is not clear to me that doctors or hospitals couldn't a) pass the costs on the patients or b) use different codes to procure payment. The linked article suggests that Medicare has a way around (a). I'd love to hear about it if any of you have more information.

This policy is a good idea from the standpoint that there are welfare losses due to medical errors and that people should never be paid for doing something wrong. On the flip side, my sense is that the impact of this policy on health care costs will be minimal, at best. The importance of medical errors as a money drain has long been overstated. It's nice to see the aforementioned popular press article get this point right.