Senate Failure to Pass Extension Causes 21.3% cut to Medicare Physician Payments on April 1
The Senate has adjourned for its two-week “Spring District Work Recess” without approving H.R. 4851, a short-term measure that would have extended the freeze on Medicare’s current physician payment rates through April 30. Several Senate Republicans led by Tom Coburn of Oklahoma objected to classifying the bill, which also included extensions of unemployment benefits and COBRA insurance, as emergency spending. The House of Representatives passed the bill on March 17. By law, the 21.3 percent cut to Medicare physician payments will take effect April 1.
The Senate returns April 12 and has scheduled a cloture vote on the 30-day extension bill for 5:30 p.m. that evening. Physicians should contact their Senators and urge them to permanently address this issue by repealing the sustainable growth rate formula. You can contact your senators via the MGMA Advocacy Center or by calling the American Medical Association Grassroots Hotline, 800.833.6354. Courtesy of MGMA
I cannot believe we live in a nation that allows for NON-MEDICAL, Unexperienced personnel to make medical decisions that they feel would benefit the elderly patients of the USA. How UNAMERICAN can you get, when the belief is that by passing such a SRG formula will help the Americans that currently have and will eventually have Medicare Insurance.
Cutting the fees of the specialists that spend more time post High School than most Congressman, excluding the physicians in Congress did to prove a point about the deficit? To save 1.5 Trillion dollars in the next two decades is what our lovely Democratic Congressman emailed to tell me, yet it will double the National Deficit before the first decade is passed?
How does this make sense?
This goes along with the ENTITLEMENT SOCIETY that we live in today!
Best of luck Physicians of the USA!!!