Paying For Value In Health Care

Floor Speech

Paying For Value In Health Care

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Speaker, I am proud that this House has finally showed the courage to tackle one of the most important issues in our country, the rising cost of health care. I want to recognize that this piece of legislation takes a huge step forward in addressing the issue of paying for value in our health care system.

The current payment system rewards volume and quantity of care, rather than quality of care. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year on procedures that do not improve patients' health. We need to change the incentive system. We need doctors and hospitals to work together to coordinate care.

In my district in southern Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic has created just such a culture, where doctors coordinate with each other and look for the best quality results. There are other institutions around the country doing the same thing. These organizations all do it a little differently, but the one thing they have in common is a culture of patient-centered care based on high quality and low cost.

These cultures can be replicated in every hospital in the country, and the way we get there is by changing the incentive system. I am very proud that the provisions in this bill to address value and geographic disparity in Medicaid are there. We have a chance to reform American health care and provide good-quality, high-outcome health care for all Americans.

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