The U.S. Senate voted on Dec. 17 to put off by 2 months a Medicare physician pay cut due to take effect on Jan. 1.
The pay cut provision was included in a larger package that would extend unemployment benefits and a payroll tax cut. The Senate voted 89-19 to approve the package, just before it left Washington for a holiday recess.
But on Dec. 19, as the House came back into session, many congressmen said they would not support the package, mainly because it only provided 2 months of relief, rather than a year or longer. The House was scheduled to vote on the bill late on Dec. 19.
Similar legislation passed the House Dec. 13, but with a longer horizon: If enacted, that bill would replace the 27% cut with a 1% increase for 2 years.
If the House votes against approving the Senate bill, and the two houses cannot compromise before Jan. 1, physicians will see a 27% reduction in fees, as dictated by the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula.
The American Medical Association expressed disgust in a statement issued after the Senate vote.
"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," AMA President Peter Carmel said in the statement.
The AMA called on Congress to stop instituting stop-gap fixes and to instead replace the SGR formula. "The 12 temporary patches that Congress has applied have raised the cost of solving the problem by more than 500% over the last few years and eroded patients’ access to care," said Dr. Carmel. "A permanent solution is the long overdue, fiscally responsible approach."