HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made a pledge to work with physicians to permanently repeal Medicare's sustainable growth-rate formula at the American Medical Association's National Advocacy Conference in Washington.
A temporary fix to the SGR, which is based on the health of the economy and triggered a 21% cut to doctors on March 1, is inadequate, Sebelius said. “We are committed to working with all of you on a permanent fix, so you don't have to spend your precious time coming to Washington” to lobby for an SGR repeal, she told conferees.
The 21% cut went into effect following the Senate's inability to act on a temporary measure to halt the scheduled reduction last week. To ward off the effects of this cut at least temporarily, the CMS has since instructed its contractors to hold claims on Medicare physician payments for the first 10 business days of March.
The CMS has taken administrative steps to provide some relief to doctors, Sebelius said, referring to an effort by the agency to take physician-administered drugs out of the SGR formula last year. “Congress has to take the next step.”
Senate lawmakers are scheduled to take up a revised jobs package later this week that would
would halt physician payment cuts cuts until Oct. 1.
To many angry and frustrated physicians attending the AMA meeting, this newest fix just “kicks the can further down the road,” said AMA conferee Michael Migliori, an ophthalmologist in Providence, R.I., whose practice is 60% Medicare.
“The idea of a six-month fix, I find that pretty insulting,” Jack Lewin, CEO of the American College of Cardiology, said in an interview. “I think Congress has taken this attitude that they can let it drift along.”
Doctors will survive this, but the people who will lose are the Medicare patients, Lewin said.
“It's a decision that we will have to make with excruciating agony over the next few weeks, whether we will continue to see Medicare patients” or just drop out of Medicare, said Thomas Eppes, a member of the AMA and a family physician in Forest, Va., regarding the 21% pay cut.
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