Congress and Medicare — Will the Cuts Stay?
The executive branch (Dept. of Health and Human Services) stepped in yesterday to stop a 10.6% cut in Medicare reimbursement to physicians from going through because Congress left for a recess before finishing deliberations on a bill. DHS is freezing current reimbursement levels for up to 10 days. After that, physicians and other health care practitioners might get the money back retrospectively if Congress can find a way to keep reimbursement at its current levels.
So, what is the danger to cutting what doctor’s are paid for treating Medicare patients? The American Medical Association is claiming that physicians will drop out from seeing Medicare patients entirely if the cuts are made permanent — they also argue that rates have been pretty flat since 2001, and that the cuts (or flat funding, whichever might result) are a disincentive for providing preventive care services.
If you want to know how your senator voted, click here.
Well the do nothing congress went on vacation before taking any action. Yes this will be a disaster particularly for PCPs and Family medicine types which there are already shortages in the field. The danger will be you will lose more physicians and the patients will be again be left trying to figure out how to pay and get their health care. Congress should be figuring out a solution to this as it has been on the table for quite some time. For them to go on vacation shows their concern for such an important issue. By the way this will not effect members of congress whose health care is all taken care of for life.
I find the possibility of serious cuts to Medicare reimbursements very concerning. According to the AMA website, the 10.6% cut for 2008 is only the beginning — the bill also calls for anothre 5% cut in 2009. With such a large proportion of the U.S. population depending on Medicare for health care coverage, a decrease in the number of physicians willing to accept Medicare could be disasterous. As it is, most of the people on Medicare already have to pay for supplemental insurance for services or prescriptions that are not covered by Medicare. Cutting reimbursements that leads to reductions in the number of health care providers who will see Medicare patients would further burden the elderly by limiting their access to necessary health care services. A decline in the coverage of preventive care would also have detrimental effects, leading to more cases of serious illness that might have been avoided if proper preventive measures were taken. Without understanding the full scope of the issue, it is hard to know whether the cuts to Medicare are absolutely necessary or if there may be alternatives that would sustain the program. It seems that this is just another failure of our current health care system — in addition to the 45 million people who are uninsured, the government-run Medicare insurance program is faltering and may not be able to ensure adequate coverage and care to the millions of elderly who depend on it.