The organizations recognized some positive aspects of the bill, such as expansion of health insurance coverage, improvements in access to emergency neurosurgical care and loan forgiveness for pediatric subspecialists.
But they pointed to several provisions that were “particularly alarming”:
- The community health insurance option would lead to “a single-payer, government-run healthcare system”;
- The need for more surgical services is overlooked by the bill’s efforts to boost primary care, such as allocating unused medical residency slots to primary care and providing primary care physicians with bonus payments, financed by other physicians;
- Encouraging states to develop their own malpractice reforms rather than calling for reforms on the federal level;
- Creating an independent advisory board that could make significant changes in Medicare reimbursements without proper Congressional oversight;
- Physicians would be required to participate in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), which does not effectively measure quality; and
- Calling simply for a one-year delay of the planned 21.2 percent payment cut for physicians rather than permanently fixing the sustainable growth rate (SGR) that creates the cut, which means that the amount to be cut would continue to accumulate, reaching 28 percent in 2011.
In addition, the organizations said the bill-writers paid little attention to the neurosurgery community’s recommendations for the legislation.
Read the AANS’ release on health reform.
