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.