Medicare to cut Physician payments 24.7 %

Dear Senators Hutchison and Cornyn,

The time has come for Congress to pass a permanent, sustainable and equitable solution to Medicare’s flawed physician fee schedule, which we all know as the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula.

As a practicing podiatrist who helps treat hundreds of Medicare patients, I can tell you firsthand that under the current SGR system physicians can’t reliably plan ahead or fully cover their rising practice costs, let alone make needed investments in innovative ways of delivering care (health information technology) that could also save money.

The result is frustrating pressure on physicians to do more for patients with less, and growing difficulty for physicians in bearing the cost of all the things Medicare pays for poorly, if at all. And many medical professionals, including myself, are questioning whether it is feasible to continue seeing Medicare patients.  I simply can't continue treating Medicare patients with a 27.4% cut in my pay check.

Because physicians and other health professionals are often the most important link between beneficiaries and the health care delivery system, Medicare should institute policies that improve the value of the program to beneficiaries and taxpayers.

We need a permanent fix NOW! No more temporary “band-aids” that push the problem further down the road at ever increasing costs.

Short-term patches will never stop the systemic damage that is being done to this federal safety-net health care system – and to our economy! These patches not only threaten care to America's elderly, they threaten the survival of small medical practices and add to the ranks of the unemployed.

MedPAC’s recent proposals for SGR reform, released in September, 2011, are misguided and should be rejected by Congress and the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction in their current form.  MedPAC’s suggestion to reduce reimbursements 5.9 percent for specialty providers in each of the next 3 years followed by a 7 year freeze would add a new series of very significant cuts to specialists at a time when they can least afford it. Such a policy would further threaten access to care for patients and would have significant negative consequences for the Medicare program.
It is critical that all of Congress fixes this problem once and for all.