Medicare population budget model could spur major pay shift

The CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s planned push for a regional population-based budget in traditional fee-for-service Medicare could launch a major transformation in curbing sprawling healthcare costs for the program.

That’s the hope of the Trump administration’s top health officials. On Monday they opened the public comment period for five primary-care pay demonstrations.

Their “population-based payment” demonstration—in which a health system, insurance plan or even a health technology company would bear full risk for at least 75,000 fee-for-service Medicare patients within a targeted geographic region—raised the most eyebrows. With many details yet to be filled in, it has also raised a lot of...