Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Important news related to Medicare physician payment - ACS Div Advocacy & Health Policy
To: ACS leaders…..
Yesterday, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) came out in favor of using the overseas contingency operations money (war drawdown savings) to pay for a full fix to the SGR (eliminating the $300 billion debt). This is significant because Senator Kyl is the second ranking Republican in the Senate. Both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have made recent statements supporting using the funds to pay for the SGR fix. The public opposition to using these funds to eliminate the SGR debt have mostly come from House Republican leadership. We have also not seen any public statements of support for this effort from the physician members of the House.
There is some expectation that the House Republicans will come out today with a piece of legislation that includes a number of things including a two year temporary fix to the Medicare physician payment crisis. A two year fix will obviously stop the 27.4 percent cut scheduled for January 1st but will lead to a 37% cut on January 1, 2014. The cost to truly fix this problem will also rise from approximately $300 billion to close to $400 billion at that point.
We continue to urge all Members of Congress to fully fix the Medicare physician payment crisis and not create a larger fiscal debt for the Medicare program.
I will stay in touch with you in the coming days as this critical issue is debated in Congress. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Christian Shalgian
Director
Division of Advocacy and Health Policy
American College of Surgeons
20 F St, NW Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20001
Email: cshalgian@facs.org
Phone: 202-672-1504
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)