The House of Representatives' health care reform bill kicks the proverbial can down the road when it comes to addressing Medicare's sustainable growth rate (SGR).
I searched all 1,990 pages of the bill and found nothing addressing the SGR. I couldn't find a shred of legalese about a temporary doc fix. I thought I must be missing it, but no. According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of the bill, "The current proposal does not include any changes [to the SGR] mechanism for setting Medicare's payment rates for physicians' services. A provision of H.R. 3200 that would have restructured that mechanism added about $245 billion to CBO's estimate of the net cost of that bill."
And that's why the new bill does nothing to the SGR. If lawmakers did include a permanent fix, their bill that reduces the deficit by $100-some billion over the next 10 years would clearly increase the deficit.
There's little doubt Congress will avert next year's 21.5% cut to Medicare rates called for under the SGR formula. They've delayed the SGR problem until the next year for ... years.
Physicians, medical societies, senior citizens who like their doctors, etc. will likely blast Congress for not tackling the SGR problem. But shouldn't all Americans be outraged at such cowardice?