The US House of Representatives passed HR 674 on Thursday and repealed the three percent withholding provision that was created under the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 (TIPRA). The bill now goes to the Senate.

“This flawed provision would have required the government to withhold three percent of Medicare physician payments,” said AMA President Peter W. Carmel, MD. “This additional burden is simply untenable in our current Medicare system. There is already a 20 percent gap between Medicare’s payments to physicians and the cost of providing care to seniors, and physicians now face a nearly 30 percent cut on January 1, 2012 due to the broken Medicare physician payment formula (SGR). We urge the Senate to pass this legislation quickly.”