Last month the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released new estimates for a fix to the flawed Medicare physician payment model known as the Sustainable Growth Rate formula (SGR). As of July 31, the CBO now estimates a cost of $273.3 billion over 10 years to freeze current Medicare rates from 2013-2022. 

The CBO also estimates that another one year patch to the SGR in January will cost taxpayers as much as $23.4 billion, only adding to the compounded cost of a permanent repeal.

Read more regarding the unsustainability of the SGR in last week’s Bulletin, here.

Read the entire CBO July 31st report on Physician Payments here.