Washington's summertime wrangling paid off for physicians as Congress successfully overrode President Bush's veto of legislation to stop a 10.6% cut to Medicare physician payments.
The legislation (H.R. 6331), which passed the House and Senate by veto-proof margins in July, extends the 0.5% Medicare pay increase in place for the first half of 2008 through the end of the year and gives physicians a 1.1% raise for next year.
H.R. 6331 also encourages physicians to use electronic prescribing by providing incentives to those who e-prescribe and imposing penalties on those who do not.
The bill, which also authorizes increased bonus payments under the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative and delays implementation of the Competitive Acquisition Program for durable medical equipment until 2009, relies on controversial cuts to the Medicare Advantage program to fund the pay update. Officials at America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents the health insurance industry, estimated that the bill will cut nearly $14 billion from the Medicare Advantage plans over the next 5 years.
The American Academy of Family Physicians praised the passage of the legislation and called on Congress to end the yearly cycle of 11th-hour congressional negotiations over physician payments.
“Congress must make good use of the time afforded them by H.R. 6331,” Dr. James King, AAFP president, said in a statement. “They must pass Medicare reform that discards the destabilizing and flawed sustainable growth formula and in its place implements the Medicare Economic Index as the basis for physician payment calculations.”
The Sustainable Growth Rate formula links physician payments to the gross domestic product and critics say it does not take into account the actual costs of medical practice.