The US Senate blocked a vote to consider Senate Bill 1776 on Wednesday. Known as the Medicare Physicians Fairness Act of 2009, the legislation would have provided a permanent fix to the flawed SGR formula. Currently Medicare physician payments will be cut by 21.5% beginning January 2010 unless Congress takes action. “NCMS leadership and staff will continue to lobby senators in Washington to fix the SGR. Your NCMS is committed to seeing that Congress fixes this problem once and for all,” NCMS President Albert J. Osbahr, MD, said. Recent letters sent to Senator Richard Burr and Senator Kay Hagan from the NCMS reaffirmed its support of the bill and requested that updates be made to the physician fee schedule in future years due to rising costs to providers. Read the letters here.
at 12:00 pm
Sandra, you used the right term. It is all about control, but sold in the name of compassion. Electronic medical records available to a government controlled health systems will enslave the public in unimaginable ways.
at 8:48 am
It is very sad what the politicians(leaders) have done to our country and then they want to control the healthcare industry??.
at 8:47 am
Why not cut cut salaries for congress 21.9%??? This would greatly help our Medicare population that have worked all of their lives to retire and then have to struggle financially!! The constant reduction of reimbursement to physicians is going to make them decide to not participate at all with Medicare and then what will our Medicare people do for medical care!!
at 7:11 am
Despite comments to the contrary, this is the beginning of health care rationing. The reality of maintaining the costs of a practice mean the number of medicare patients with less reimbursement will have to be offset by others. The answer to health care is tort reform and less managed care. The government should improve the VA system, medicaid and medicare before they start taking on more. Why cut our salaries when congress keeps voting themselves raises? We try to help medicare patients as much as possible with medication samples to offset the high costs with their prescription plans. These people have worked hard all of their lives andfrequently struggle with the difficult choice of which prescriptions to fill vs. eating healthy. When I get to Medicare age, I hope I can have better choices.