Rep. Roskam: Modernize the Stark law to reflect changing times

The House Ways and Means committee's Health Subcommittee recently held a hearing titled “Modernizing Stark Law to Ensure the Successful Transition from Volume to Value in the Medicare Program.” Its purpose was to evaluate the Stark law within the context of our modern-day, technological advancements and learn from healthcare professionals what steps need to be taken to sustain a more advanced system of healthcare that will provide higher-quality care at lower costs.

The Stark law is a 1980s-era policy originally intended to protect Medicare beneficiaries from excessive costs and other potential harms that could result from physician referrals of patients to other providers with whom they have financial ties. However, we've seen this law driving up costs and creating additional, unnecessary regulatory burdens for healthcare providers.

Named after former Democratic Rep. Pete Stark of California, who sponsored the initial bill, the Stark law was, and in many ways still is, necessary to ensure patient safety and act as a safeguard against wasting taxpayer dollars. The law essentially prevents physicians from making referrals to entities that provide certain services if they have a financial stake in that entity, thus eliminating unnecessary services that could raise healthcare costs.

Over time, however, we've seen the web of regulations born out of the law become nearly impossible to navigate without legal assistance. The Stark law has become so complex and burdensome that healthcare providers, legislators and even the bill's original sponsor have called for repealing the law in its current form, which has veered from the original intent.

In an era when we are now pushing our providers to work closely together to bring down costs, and in many cases share in the savings they create, we need to update the laws to ease the burden on providers and give the CMS more flexibility to approve waivers to providers who enter into these high-value arrangements.

Through bipartisan support, the Health Subcommittee is speaking with healthcare professionals across the country to identify unnecessary regulations that must be met at the cost of patient care. Working together, we can find a balance to maintain a system of accountability for providers that makes sense while protecting patients and providing quality care at a reasonable cost. The goal of the subcommittee in evaluating the Stark law is simple: better care for Medicare patients.

Our nation—in fact, our world—has seen significant technological advancements over the past 40 years; it's now time for our laws to catch up to the modern-day tools at our disposal in order to ensure we use these tools responsibly without hindering progress.

Regulations are often well-intended, and there is value to smart regulation for patient and provider protection. However, new regulations year after year have a compounding effect. Healthcare is constantly changing, and we need to review these rules as technologies and care delivery models change.

Hearings we've held on Stark law modernization and achievements through the Medicare Red Tape Relief Program offer members of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee the opportunity to work together to find solutions that improve healthcare quality and safety.