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Help Stop Medicare’s Physician Cuts
By admin | November 15, 2007
The Senate Finance Committee is working on legislation to stop future Medicare physician payment cuts scheduled for January 1, 2008. Our own Senator Ken Salazar is a member of this Committee and needs to hear from physicians and their staffs on this issue. It is very important that the Senator hears from the
Colorado physician community now about the importance of stopping these cuts. These cuts are mandated by the SGR formula under current law and Congress must make changes in the future to prevents these cuts from happening again. Please call Senator Salazar to urge his leadership on protecting the ability of physicians to see Medicare patients. Some points you may want to bring up:
It is extremely important that Congress stop the cuts for 08 and 09 and give physicians a positive update for two years. For Fiscal years 2008 and 2009 the cuts are projected to be at least 15%. (Legislation passed by the House would give a .5% positive update for two years.) A 10% cut in Medicare reimbursements might cause some physicians to opt-out of the Medicare systems as they are already facing huge financial pressures in insurance reimbursements and high medical liability rates
Also very important that Congress pays for the cuts now and does not exacerbate the situation by passing on the costs to the following years. Congress has a real opportunity to pass legislation which will create a two year window to develop a true solution to the Medicare problem.
Senator Salazar’s leadership is critical now to help resolve this situation. We need physicians and medical office staff to impress upon him how important this issue is to your practice and your patients. Contact information for Senator Salazar can be found at http://salazar.sen=te.gov/contact/index.html.
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