Tell Congress: Keep Your Medicare Money!

We don’t want your pay raise, says a leading physician group, responding to the American Medical Association’s effort to stop payment cuts scheduled to go into effect beginning in January 2006, and replace them with a pay raise.

In a memo sent to Members of Congress today, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons writes: “Some other medical groups have been telling you that proposed cuts in physician payments will harm seniors by creating a crisis in access to physicians. But we disagree. There’s already a problem, and it has nothing to do with the new rates.”

In ads and on their website, the AMA says that its survey shows that 38% of its members will cut the number of new Medicare patients they accept if the first round of cuts goes into effect in 2006. They not only call for a halt to the cuts, but a change in the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) that would provide for pay raises in 2006 and subsequent years.

In its memo, AAPS refutes the AMA conclusions and tells the government they don’t [want] a pay raise, but instead lays out the case for less government interference.

“Our surveys show many physicians ALREADY refuse new Medicare patients. In fact, about 33%. But even more alarming is that 40% already restrict services they’ll perform to current Medicare patients. (See Disheartened Doctors, Patient Problems: AAPS Biannual Survey of Physicians on Medicare and Patients’ Access to Care, Journal of American Physicians & Surgeons, Winter 2004.)

“But here’s what you need to know: the reason they do so is NOT because of money. When asked, it’s the government ‘hassle factor.’ The two leading reasons given were ‘billing and regulatory requirements, and hassles and/or threats from Medicare carriers/government.’ Payment rates were down the list."  To read more, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/medicare.asp.

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