AMA President Cecil Wilson, MD, outlined to Kaiser Health News the AMA's plan for lobbying Congress to delay scheduled cuts to Medicare reimbursements on Dec. 1 and Jan. 1. The AMA and other physician groups will need the cooperation of a lame duck session of Congress to prevent a 30% decrease in payments over the next couple months.
"Our strategy is to say to Congress, 'What we want from you is to stabilize Medicare payments to physicians for the next 13 months to get us through 2011,'" Dr. Wilson says. "And then that will give us an opportunity working with the new Congress to develop a means of getting rid of the formula, putting in a formula or a payment mechanism that recognizes increased costs of care."
This is the same strategy the AMA has employed for awhile now and it hasn't work. The sustainable growth rate (SGR) budgetary mechanism responsible for the cuts has been a problem for years. Permanently fixing the formula will now cost $276 billion and would be difficult for budget hawks in Congress to offset.
Kaiser pushed Dr. Wilson on the effectiveness of the AMA's strategy and he says physicians will no longer accept temporary fixes or the threat of 30% reimbursement cuts. "Well, this is not about the AMA; this is about senior citizens who need care. I can just tell you from my own [experience in] Winter Park, Fla., the conversation in the grocery store lines [or] at the shopping mart is, ‘Do you know any physician who is still taking new Medicare patients?' And the answer is no."