The AMA is enlisting senior citizens and military officers in a media blitz to persuade the Senate to cancel a looming 21 percent pay cut, due to go into effect on March 1, and replace it with small annual increases for specialists and somewhat larger ones for primary care physicians.
Every year, Congress rides to the rescue and provides a one-year fix to the sustainable growth rate formula, which is mandated each year by a longstanding law. But things have gotten more complicated this year. The election this week of Republican Scott Brown to the vacant Massachusetts’ Senate seats means that Democrats have lost their 60-vote majority to override a Republican filibuster and pass their health reform legislation.
The health reform bills included a full-year payment fix. In December, when passage of reform still seemed likely, Congress approved a two-month fee fix, intended as a stopgap until the reforms passed. But with the current version of health reform unlikely to be passed by March 1, if ever, Congress will again need to step in.
The AMA, AARP and the Military Officers Association of America have started running TV ads in states like North Dakota and Maine, where senators are on the fence about rescuing doctors.
“Time is running out,” warned AMA Immediate Past-President Nancy H. Nielsen, MD. “The Senate must take immediate action to protect choice of physicians and access to care for Medicare and TRICARE patients. Congress must permanently repeal the formula that causes the cuts.”
The new bill would replace the SGR formula with annual payment increases of 2 percent more than GDP growth for primary care physicians and 1 percent more for other physicians.
AMA President-elect Cecil Wilson, MD, said the association had received assurances from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Finance chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) of a permanent fix. But Democratic leadership may no longer be in a position to fulfill that promise without the filibuster-proof majority.
After a record year of federal spending, fiscally conservative Senators appear to be on the fence about a permanent fee fix. Approval would mean relinquishing $210 billion in expected savings from the cuts, but that amount was always a paper figure because Congress has never allowed the SGR formula to be implemented.
Read the AMA’s release on physician fee cuts.
