US healthcare spending is extreme currently at approximately $4.3 trillion.  The single largest payer of healthcare services is Medicare at roughly $900 billion annually or 21% of total healthcare spending.   In this edited volume, recently published by Johns Hopkins University Press, Dr. Moffit along with eleven other contributors including Joe Antos, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Brian Miller, Mark Pauly and Gail Wilensky, lay out the conservative version of Medicare reform.  In sum, the authors argue federal policymakers reinvent Medicare as a defined contribution or premium support program or at minimum substantially expand the Medicare Advantage program (Medicare Part C), or Medicare coverage provided by private insurance companies. 

The interview begins by Dr. Moffit commenting on whether healthcare services can be defined as a market commodity. He discusses the problem of healthcare pricing, measuring for value in healthcare, improving Medicare Advantage benchmarking, remedying Medicare Advantage coding intensity via retrospective risk adjustment and risk transfer pools and competing fee for service Accountability Care Organizations (ACOs) against Medicare Advantage.

Dr. Robert Moffit is a Senior Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation specializing in health care and entitlement programs, moreover Medicare. Dr. Moffit also serves on the Maryland Health Care Commission as an appointee of Gov. Larry Hogan and he is a member of the advisory board of the Buckley School of Public Speaking in Camden, South Carolina. He brings to the reform effort experience as a senior official of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) during the Reagan administration. Dr. Moffit is a co-author of “Why Obamacare Is Wrong for America,” (Harper Collins, 2011). He was a contributor to “A Time for Governing: Policy Solutions From the Pages of National Affairs” (Encounter Books, 2012) and “Controversial Issues in Social Policy” (Allyn and Bacon, 2003), a university textbook on public policy. He has published in numerous professional and specialty journals among them Health Affairs, Health Systems Review, Harvard Health Policy Review, Inquiry, Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, National Affairs, New England Journal of Medicine, Postgraduate Medicine, and Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. His analysis and commentary have been cited or published by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Washington Post and The Washington Times. He holds a master's degree and a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Arizona. He received his bachelor's degree in Political Science from LaSalle University in Philadelphia.

Information on “Modernizing Medicare,” is at: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12839/modernizing-medicare.

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