AMA Chief to Congress: Deal With the Doc Fix

AMA Chief to Congress: Deal With the Doc Fix

By Dena Bunis, CQ HealthBeat Managing Editor

While the joint committee on deficit reduction is busy finding a way to avoid a “trigger” that would cut 2 percent from doctors’ Medicare payments, Peter Carmel, the American Medical Association’s new president, wants Congress to deal with a more pressing problem for physicians: fixing the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula, more commonly known as the doc fix.


“Any serious proposal to confront our nation’s fiscal challenges must address the massive shortfall in funding for Medicare payments for physician services,” Carmel writes in a blog post Tuesday. “The payment cuts we face on Jan. 1 are of such a magnitude that the result will be massive disruption of care for the nation’s elderly and disabled populations.” Carmel reminds lawmakers in his post that a 29.5 percent reduction in Medicare payment rates is scheduled for Jan. 1.
The Medicare Payment Advisory Committee said in March that it will tackle this problem and could issue a recommendation to Congress in October.


Carmel said in his blog post that a bipartisan consensus should be possible.


“The final report released by the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in December, as well as the recommendations of the Senate bipartisan ‘Gang of Six,’ included funding to permanently reform the SGR while also achieving a $4 trillion in overall deficit reductions. So it can be done,” Carmel wrote.


Physician groups had hoped that the debt deal would have included a remedy for the SGR, and soon after the law was passed, doctor lobbies made it clear that they would try to influence the panel to take up that issue.