Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement
Battle For Pay Cut Relief Heats Up On The Hill
Physicians may still receive a respite from the 4.3 percent cut that's slated to befall practices in January, if one influential member of Congress has her way.
Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-CT), chair of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, signaled her determination to push ahead with H.R. 3617, her bill to save physicians from pay cuts. H.R. 3617 would guarantee practices a 1.5 percent pay increase in 2006 and 2007, and then pay increases based on an index of health care costs.
Physicians would only receive the full increases in 2007 and 2008 if they reported quality data, and starting in 2009, they'd have to meet certain quality measures to receive the full pay increase. In a Sept. 29 hearing of the subcommittee, the second one on H.R. 3617, Johnson showed she remains focused on saving doctors from pay cuts and moving Medicare "into the 21st century" with pay-for-performance. But ranking Democrat Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark said Medicare needs some mechanism to control physician spending, because right now physicians can simply "play less golf," perform more procedures, and receive more money.
Part of the problem is that when physicians do more work, it sometimes saves Medicare more money on hospital care, but physicians don't get credit for those savings. Johnson has added an amendment to her bill to create a pool of money from both hospital and physician payments to reward practices for managing care and providing end-of-life care to terminal patients.
Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement
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