Congress will be in recess for the week of Thanksgiving, but physicians will keep the heat on lawmakers as they near the final weeks of the year.
Doctors are not thrilled with some elements of bipartisan draft legislation that House and Senate leaders are pushing—particularly its 10-year payment freeze. But they're going to fight for it anyway because they'll face a sustainable-growth-rate-driven 24.4% Medicare pay cut Jan. 1 if Congress doesn't act.
The Senate Finance Committee scheduled an “open executive session” for Dec. 12 to discuss repealing and replacing the Medicare SGR physician payment formula. On Friday, 141 Republicans and 118 Democrats in the House signed on to a letter urging House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to move legislation addressing the hated payment formula.
“I'm not going to sugarcoat it—there are things I really don't like about the proposal,” American Medical Association President Dr. Ardis Dee Hoven said during the recent interim meeting of the AMA's House of Delegates. But, she said, “walking away right now would be a colossal mistake.”
The proposal and its pay freeze would at least do away with the regular chaotic cycle of looming decreases and last-minute fixes, which included five temporary legislative “patches” to suspend SGR-driven pay cuts in 2010 alone.
“No more annual threats,” Hoven said. “No more patches. No more sword of Damocles dangling over our heads.”
Follow Andis Robeznieks on Twitter: @MHARobeznieks
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