One good thing about the MMA

Most of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 is utter crap (and annoying crap for those of us in health insurance to sift through) BUT there are small parts of it that are actually good things. The Disease Management industry is plagued by lack of rigorous analysis that supports the hype it claims. What Medicare Health Support formerly known as the Chronic Care Improvement Program does is conduct a trial by taking two equivalent groups of ~20,000 people with traditional Medicare Fee For Service (FFS) The people are selected by having expensive health conditions (diabetes and/or congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)) and half are assigned to a disease management program. The other half are the control group. The disease management companies submitted bids to provide services to the intervention group and guarantee a net 5% savings to Medicare or their fees are at risk. This is a step towards figuring out what kinds of disease management activities are the most cost effective and towards making the disconnected pieces of the health care system work together more effectively.