Dear Chairmen Baucus and Camp and Ranking Members Hatch and Levin:

The Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies.  Together, our member companies employ more than 16 million individuals, generate $7.4 trillion in annual revenues, and provide health care and retirement benefits to millions of American families.  Business Roundtable is invested in addressing health care costs that hamper essential economic growth.  The Roundtable is pleased to comment on the Committees’ recently released proposal that would reform payments to physicians under America’s entitlement programs.  We are encouraged by your bipartisan, bicameral efforts, as we remain concerned about the viability of America’s entitlement programs for future generations.

We applaud the committees for taking steps to reform the current Medicare physician payment system in order to ensure that the program appropriately rewards providers for delivering high-quality, efficient care.  These reforms will, in turn, protect the solvency of the Medicare trust funds.  However, we hope that the Committees will be bold in their approach to any entitlement reform.  Therefore, we are attaching our recommendations for modernizing Medicare and other entitlement programs.  
We want to ensure that future generations of American retirees can rely on the assurance of basic retirement security.  Our proposals would gradually bring Medicare and Social Security into alignment with America’s fiscal and demographic realities, while fully protecting current retirees and those near retirement.  Our overriding goal in this effort is to preserve the safety net for future generations.

In addition to reforming Medicare’s physician payment system, we support gradually increasing the benefit age of Medicare to align with Social Security.  We also propose that more means testing of the benefits be introduced to preserve benefits for low-income elderly Americans.  We also support modernizing the Medicare benefit, allowing seniors to choose between competitive plans and the traditional program.  These reforms will reward providers for offering coordinated care that is based on value, not the volume of care.

Thank you for your leadership and ongoing efforts to protect and modernize these important entitlement programs. 

The Roundtable's entitlement modernization proposals are available here.

Sincerely,

Gary Loveman
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Caesars Entertainment Corporation
Chair, Health and Retirement Committee
Business Roundtable