An op-ed in the Boston Globe suggests not paying for rehospitalizations for Medicare patients within 30 days:

Medicare spends vast sums on hospital care for patients readmitted within 30 days of their previous stay in a hospital. These readmissions are often avoidable. And if Congress focuses on reducing the need for rehospitalization in areas where the practice is most common, Medicare could save many billions of dollars.

Not surprisingly, op-eds like these are written by non-physician policy makers, and further puts doctors in increasingly difficult situations.

Physicians are pressured by hospitals to discharge patients and keep the turnover high, which increases revenue for the hospital.

Now they're taking it from the other end, with this proposal not to pay for readmissions.

It would be nice if someone advocated the proper support system be put in place first before acting on these ideas.

The major reason for readmissions is inappropriate follow-up, which can be directly traced to a lack of primary care access. Solve the primary care shortage, and readmissions will go down.

Rather than cuts in payment that only superficially addresses the problem, policy makers should be trying to embrace the true cause of many of our health system's problems.

That means ensuring appropriate patient access to primary care.