Experts Favor Broad Medicare Reforms to Control Costs and Foster Health Care Innovations, Survey Says

New York, N.Y., November 2, 2009—A vast majority of leaders in health care and health policy believe Medicare has been successful in providing access to care and stable coverage to the elderly and disabled individuals; however only a small percentage think the program has realized its potential to achieve other important goals, like using its leverage as the country's largest purchaser of services to control costs and promote a high performance health system. In the latest Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Health Care Opinion Leaders survey, the experts surveyed favor sweeping changes to Medicare—reforms that would help control program costs and support broader health system reform.