Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
This may be the case. Fox News reports: The Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation permanently overhauling how Medicare pays physicians late Tuesday in a rare show of near-unanimity from Congress. The legislation headed off a 21 percent cut in doctors’ Medicare fees that would have taken effect Wednesday, when the government planned to begin processing physicians’…
The sustainable growth rate (SGR) was implemented by Congress in1998. The SGR’s aim was to slowly bring down or at least decellerate Medicare compensation for physicians compensation. However, each year, it gets reversed by Congress. Now, instead of a gradual decline, the implementation of SGR would result in about at 25%pay cut for Medicare docs.…
It’s that time of year. The time of year where Medicare threatens to cut physician salaries by double digits (in this case 24.4%). This is no idle threat. Under current law, CMS is mandated to cut physician salaries under the sustainable growth rate formula. Its the time of year that physician lobbyists (rightly) complain that…
There has much debate in the Presidential debates about IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board. IPAB can make cuts to Medicare spending, but the question is whether any of these recommended cuts would ever actually be enacted, since Congress can reverse any IPAB recommendation. According to an article in The Hill, the answer may be…
Merrill Goozner reports that paying for the “doc fix” comes at the cost of preventive services. Friday’s payroll tax cut extension bill included $18 billion to maintain Medicare physician salaries at current levels for the rest of this year. Unlike the payroll tax extension, Congress insisted on paying for the doc-fix with offsetting budget cuts. …
Kaiser Health News reports: The House GOP leadership’s agreement to a Senate proposal averts a 27 percent paycut to doctors scheduled to take effect in January. The deal delays the cut until March 1, and lawmakers hope to hammer out an agreement on a longer-term fix to the payment formula before then. As I previously noted,…
The Healthcare Economist is going on vacation for the next week. In the meantime, I pose to you, my reader, a bet. Do you think the ‘doc fix’ gets passed? Before you read on, make your predictions in the comments section below. Healthcare Economist’s Prediction