The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has issued its annual report and recommendations to Congress.

The major issues addressed in the report include:

• implementing a unified payment system for post-acute care
• reforming Medicare payment for drugs under Part B
• redesigning the merit-based incentive payment system (MIPS) and strengthening advanced alternative payment models
• using premium support for Medicare
• the relationship between clinician services and other Medicare services
• payments from drug and device manufacturers to physicians and teaching hospitals in 2015
• the medical device industry
• stand-alone emergency departments
• hospital and skilled nursing facility use by Medicare beneficiaries who reside in nursing facilities
• the role of Medicare policy in provider consolidation

To learn more about MedPAC’s annual report to Congress, see this MedPAC news release, this fact sheet, and the report itself.