It’s that time of year again, when there’s a crisp in the air and Congress performs the same song and dance around preventing massive cuts to your Medicare payments due to the sustainable growth rate (SGR).
UPDATE: The House shot down the Senate's two-month payroll tax bill late Dec. 19, which would have prevented the SGR cut from taking affect through February. The House is now deciding whether to resubmit their original proposal which would give your payments a 0% update for two years.
Right now, Congress has lumped in an SGR fix to the 2012 Physician Fee Schedule final rule that would prevent a 27.4% cut to your Medicare payments starting Jan. 1, 2012 into the payroll tax bill.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a version of this bill which would have kept the SGR at bay for two years (PBN 12/5/11). The Senate passed a two-month rendition of it on Dec. 18. The Senate’s version would keep your payments safe from the nearly 30% cut for two months, expiring in February 2012. The House, which has threatened to kill the Senate’s bill, is now reviewing it and should vote late Dec. 19. Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has also vowed to submit a new version of the bill after the New Year.
The AMA sounded off on Congress’ last-minute efforts: “Waiting until the last week of the legislative session to address a problem that Congress knew was looming all year is not the way to conduct our nation’s business,” said AMA president Peter Carmel, M.D. in a statement release.
“It is time for Congress to act on previous commitments to repeal the failed Medicare physician payment formula. The 12 temporary patches that Congress has applied have raised the cost of solving the problem by more than 500 percent over the last few years.... A permanent solution is the long overdue, fiscally responsible approach,” he says.
NOTE: Part B News is following this story very closely. Stay tuned to www.partbnews.com for the latest on the impending SGR cuts.