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Letters: Congress must stop Medicare cuts


TMA, the American Medical Association, and more than 100 state and specialty medical societies are urging Congress to nullify the 2-percent cut in Medicare payments to physicians called for under the Budget Control Act’s sequestration provision and the 27-percent cut coming due to the flawed Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. In letters to congressional leaders, TMA and other groups said the combi- nation of a sequestration cut and loom- ing SGR payment cut “would not only impede improvements to our health care system, it could lead to serious access-to- care issues for Medicare patients as well as employment reductions in medical practices. Sequestration also will result in across-the-board cuts to a wide range of essential programs to ensure high quality and accessible patient care, and we believe that Congress should not ab- dicate its responsibility to deliberate and make policy decisions on what is impor- tant and needs to be funded.” They added that the cuts “could not occur at a worse time. Medicare physi- cian payments have been nearly frozen for a decade, while the cost of caring for patients has increased by more than 20 percent. Congress still has not revealed a clear plan for addressing the 27-percent cut in 2013 called for by the Medicare SGR formula. While these cuts alone will be devastating to physician practices and patient access to care, physicians are also facing present and future financial penalties if they do not successfully par- ticipate in multiple Medicare programs, including the e-prescribing program, the electronic health record meaningful use program, and the Physician Quality Reporting System, as well as the value- based modifier.”


The letters conclude by saying that


Congress is responsible for ensuring that Medicare has sufficient funding to sustain adequate payment for medical services physicians provide to senior citi- zens and people with disabilities. “The status quo is unsustainable and will do considerable harm to the Medicare pro- gram as well as the broader health care


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