Opinion: The White House promises exciting Medicare reforms, but there's a catch

This week the Obama administration announced a dramatic plan to accelerate payment reform under Medicare, by moving away from the fee-for-service model toward something akin to pay-for-performance. The administration pledges to tie 50 percent of payments to quality by 2016. On the one hand, this is promising forward momentum that has been long overdue. Virtually everyone hates fee-for-service, with its perverse incentives that end up paying providers more money for worse care. An avoidable hospital acquired infection, for instance, results in more services and more fees, meaning that bad outcomes yield good money.