The Heritage Foundation has a new Backgrounder on how to reform Medicare - through consumer-driven control rather than a top-down approach.  The summary states the following:

"Rapidly rising Medicare spending is a major cause of the federal government’s budget problems. Proposals to reform Medicare and slow its spending fall into one of two categories: more government micromanagement or empowerment of health care consumers in a functioning marketplace. Those who promote top-down spending controls optimistically assume that federal regulators can accomplish now something that has eluded Medicare’s administrators for more than 40 years. In contrast, the market-based approach to reform would harness the power of financial incentives to encourage health care consumers to choose the best, most efficient means of getting services and would reward providers for finding ways to deliver more for less."

Read the full report here.

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