Doctors Run Ads Against Medicare Compensation Cuts
From the Cincinnati Enquirer:
Medicare plans to cut doctor fees by an average of 26 percent over the next six years, starting with a 4.3 percent cut effective Jan. 1. The AMA claims the cuts will force many doctors to limit how many new Medicare patients they accept.
“Physicians want to serve senior patients, but they cannot afford to accept an unlimited number of new Medicare patients into their practices if Medicare payments do not keep up with the cost of providing care,” said Dr. J. Edward Hill, AMA president.
“In Ohio, Medicare payments to physicians will be cut nearly $5 billion over the next six years - that’s a huge loss of federal dollars that should be going toward caring for our state’s Medicare patients,” said Dr. Molly Katz, a Cincinnati physician who also is president of the Ohio State Medical Association.
The AMA plans to run a series of radio and newspaper ads urging Congress to step in to reduce or eliminate the proposed cuts.
From the Medicare Camp:
Medicare officials have said the rate cuts are needed because the program has been spending more than it expected on doctor bills in recent years. Physician outlays grew 13 percent last year, and 8 percent the year before.
The proposed cuts reflect a “sustainable growth formula” built into the Medicare payment system. When spending outpaces expectations in one year, rate cuts are designed to follow the next year to keep spending at an affordable pace.
That formula has called for doctor rate cuts every year since 2001, but the only cut that actually took effect occurred in 2002. Every year since then, Congress has stepped in to override the formula.
It seems to boil down to this: Medicare payouts in their current form are not sustainable. We either need spending to decrease or funding to increase… the money has to come from somewhere. If it doesn’t come out of the doctor’s end, it will either have to come from the seniors in the form of higher premiums, or from the general population in the form of higher taxes.