Medicare Physician Cuts Patched Again
This past Monday night, the U.S. Senate passed H.R. 4302, the “Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014,” thereby postponing the 24 percent Medicare physician payment cut until April 1, 2015. Instead, the current 0.5% update will remain in place to the end of the year, followed by a freeze from January to March, 2015.
Because the House of Representatives had already passed an identical version of the bill on March 27, the legislation is now on the desk of President Obama where he is expected to sign it into law.
The AMS, along with over 80 other state medical societies and national specialty societies, and physician organizations signed on to a letter to the House of Representatives and another to the Senate stating our strong opposition to yet another temporary patch instead of outright repeal of SGR. Over the last 14 years, Congress has temporarily patched the SGR 16 times at a total cost of almost $154 billion, which is more than the estimated cost of SGR repeal legislation.
In addition to avoiding the 24% payment cut the other “immediate” provisions in the bill include:
- ICD-10 delay in implementation for one year, pushed from October 1, 2014 to October 1, 2015
- extension of the work GPCI “floor” until April 1, 2015
Some AMS members asked why AMS would oppose a bill that accomplished those three things. By adopting yet another temporary patch, the cost to repeal the SGR goes up. The delay in implementation of ICD-10 takes the pressure off of AMS efforts to repeal ICD-10 altogether. Five of Arkansas’ six congressional members are co-sponsors of legislation that would do just that. In addition, there are provisions in the bill to “pay for” the patch that include reductions in RVUs for so-called misvalued CPT codes resulting in cuts for many physician services, and a modification to the Sequester rules that will ultimately result in higher cuts down the road.