MedPAC: Journey to the Center of Health Policy

You've seen those parody maps in which the foreground frames a distinct locale, such as Manhattan's 9th Avenue, in magnified, bountiful detail, while letting other cities, states, and whole countries recede into the horizon as mere topographical specks.  The conceit -- that the distinct locale is the center of the universe -- is one some clever health policy cartographer might enlist to depict 601 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., digs for MedPAC, as ground zero for all manner of great thinking on Medicare, as well as, by implication, the program's lesser private insurance pretenders.

Indeed, MedPAC's influence has never seemed greater, a fact underscored just last Friday when the Commission let rip its annual June report, a health policy bible fertile with ideas that sweep across MA plans, hospitals, comparative effectiveness, home care, drugs, and all the other vital precincts.   Growing out of two largely forgotten predecessor organizations, MedPAC now seems the outsourcee of choice for a Congress that desperately needs a politically neutral arbiter to help sort through Medicare's often-intractable issues.  But lest our health policy map become myopically focused on New Jersey Avenue, two events remind us that those specks on the distant horizon can be pretty important, too.