Docs Still Looking for Their Own Medicare Fix

CHICAGO — The American Medical Association recently gave
Congress its recommendations about how Medicare’s looming physician
payment issue should be fixed.

The association has for years called for a redo of the
sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula by which physician
payments are calculated, and which, for years, has resulted in
annual pay decreases that have subsequently been prevented by
Congress. Under the current formula, if Congress doesn’t again act
to stop reimbursement cuts scheduled for Jan. 1, 2012, the docs are
looking at a 29.5 percent pay reduction.

The annual Medicare Trustees’ report, issued May 13, highlighted
the problem, noting that the cut is a big
part of keeping program finances in line.

But AMA immediate past president J. James Rohack said in a
statement that “the Medicare Trustees report leaves no doubt that
the time to repeal the Medicare physician payment formula is now
— to keep from digging a deeper financial hole and to
preserve access to care for patients … This cut is the
highest ever scheduled under the broken Medicare physician payment
system, and it threatens access to care for our nation’s seniors,
military families, people with disabilities and the baby boomers
now entering Medicare. The longer it takes to reform this system,
the greater the cost.”

In a proposal presented to Congress earlier this month, the AMA
called for total repeal of the SGR, to be replaced with stable
payments for a five-year period during which testing of pilot
projects would take place to form the basis for a new physician
payment system.

“We will continue to work with policy-makers on both sides of
the aisle to replace the broken Medicare physician payment system
with one that better reflects the costs and practice of 21st
century medical care, and provides stability for physicians and
their Medicare patients,” Rohack said.

Read the
AMA statement in full.

View the
AMA’s testimony to Congress.