Thread by @ASlavitt

There’s so much crazy news today that a major health care policy change & some results released today won’t get noticed.

Bottom line: changing how we pay for care in Medicare is reducing costs and improving quality & will happen more rapidly.

If you want a few more details...

Medicare changed how it paid care to reward quality & improve efficiency in a pilot. 44 groups of physicians & hospitals saved the government $167 million in one year. 👇Which means they saved a multiple of that.

To me what’s important... 2/

cms.gov/newsroom/press…

This shows Paul Ryan and others who aim to panic us into cutbacks of Medicare that they are wrong. We have the tools to more than sustain Medicare & make health care more affordable without draconian cuts, but smart reforms. 3/

The program comes from a law some of you may have heard of called the “Affordable Care Act.” It was a major focus of the Obama Administration, led by people like @PatrickConwayMD. And ably carried on by people like @AdamCMMi.

If you’re still with me, a bit more...4/

(I can tell everyone is as excited as me by this news.)

(If you think I’m excited and want really geeky details check out @Farzad_MD’s feed today.)

Now, more...5/

I was part of the Trustees for Medicare and Social Security and spent a bunch of time understanding the future soundness of Medicare.

Here’s what’s up. When Ryan and others say “Medicare will Run out of money in the next decade,” they are (what’s the word?)...lying. 6/

What actually happens is based on how fast people age, how much workers make, and how much medical costs grow, within a decade Medicare could only have 99.9% of what they need.

Not 0% but 99.9%.

What does this mean? 7/

It means that if h care costs grow < 1% lower than currently projected (3% vs 4% say), Medicare has enough funding to meet well over 100% of its needs forever.

This is the big news of the cost reduction results today. Better care, no cuts, key to Medicare sustainability.8/

This is the other part of the news today. An announcement that more health care systems will now be pushed to go faster to the kind of program that showed these results. 9/

For those of you who stuck w me, that’s it. Hope it made sense. /end

The Texas judge that made the preposterous ACA ruling in doing so ruled to make the program that is generating better cost and quality results unconstitutional. You seek he says this was Congress’s intent when it passed the tax bill.

And Trump said it was great for America. /end