More than 1 million Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in health law savings programs

More than one million Medicare beneficiaries are now enrolled in programs of the healthcare reform law that aim to reward doctors and hospitals for working together to improve the coordination and quality of care while saving money, the Obama administration announced Tuesday.

Twenty-seven so-called "Accountable Care Organizations" have signed contracts with the Medicare agency to serve 375,000 beneficiaries in 18 states, the Medicare agency announced. The organizations are located in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin.

That brings the total number of beneficiaries enrolled in the law's shared savings programs to 1.1 million, the agency said.

"We are encouraged by this strong start and confident that by the end of this year, we will have a robust program in place, benefiting millions of seniors and people with disabilities across the country," Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement.

The provisions replacing Medicare's traditional system of paying per test or procedure with rewards for quality of care among the few aspects of president Obama's health law aimed at lowering healthcare costs. The Accountable Care Organizations got off to a rough start last year when hospitals balked at initial regulations seen as too rigid, but the program has since begun to take off.

The idea took a hit earlier this year, however, when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report finding that six similar programs have mostly failed to lower costs over the past 20 years.

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