STAT+: Momentum is building for a big change to how doctors get paid

Congress is weighing the first major overhaul of how Medicare pays doctors in more than a decade, and both Democrats and Republicans appear to agree on the broad approach. The main policy under consideration would link Medicare’s doctor pay rates to a medical inflation measure, giving physicians guaranteed pay boosts similar to those hospitals and other parts of the health care system have long received.

That change would mark a retreat from the longstanding idea that Medicare can control how many services physicians provide on a national basis—an idea that has undergirded Medicare’s doctor payments for decades. It would also reduce the government’s push to get clinicians to engage in value-based care, where they are paid more to keep patients healthy.