Congress (Again!) To Address Medicare Physician Payment

I apologize - this posting is LONG overdue! Every year, as you may know. Medicare's physician payments are adjusted based on something called the Sustainable Growth Rate, or SGR. This is a formula that was put in place many years ago, and was intended to connect health-care costs with the overall economy. Health care costs started exceeding the overall economy growth in 2001, and each year since then, Congress has had to address the result - cuts in Medicare payments to physicians. And, each year Congress has, at the last minute (and sometimes too late, resulting in all kinds of headaches for billing companies and office staff), stopped the cuts, and left the physician payments in the same place, or provided for a very slight increase. If Congress didn't stop the cuts, physicians might stop seeing Medicare patients, which would cause a huge outcry from some of the most powerful lobbies out there, specifically, AARP.

This year, the cut was set to be 27.4%. When Congress voted to delay the payroll tax vacation expiration two months, the reduction to the SGR was postponed to March 1 also. The Medical Group Management Association, along with other physician-advocacy organizations, is lobbying Congress hard to permanently fix the Medicare physician payment formula before March 1. Keep your fingers crossed, and write your Congressman!