Holiday Traditions: Trees, Wassail, and an SGR Campaign
Mike Abrams, Executive Vice President of the Iowa Medical Society
Mark McClellan, MD, was the HCFA (now CMS) director under President George W. Bush. He recently said "The threat of payment cuts has become a holiday tradition, just not a very enjoyable one."
Indeed, it seems that there is nothing new under the sun. Every November we issue calls for you to contact your federal legislators and express outrage that the reckless physician Medicare reimbursement cut needs Congressional action to prevent it from taking place. Really? Ten years after the admittedly fatally-flawed law has been enacted and we're still placing these calls?
The trajectory of the issue is as predictable as it is disturbing. Legislators will stay in DC until Christmas or later and, at the last possible minute, intercept the policy. CMS might or might not have time to administer the late-night change in policy, so your revenue stream could be disrupted. Of course, Congress might not have time to act at all, resulting in a suspension of all claims processing until they figure it out. Or the cut might take effect, and Congress might retroactively fix it, causing you to either re-submit claims, or causing the carriers immeasurable grief to append claims processed earlier with supplemental reimbursement.
It's enough to make Santa scowl.
Meantime, Iowa physicians are facing a 30% cut in Medicare reimbursement for services offered beginning January 1. Most reasonable people are doing their annual reassurances: "You know this won't happen," and "we've never let the cut go through," etc. But if you live with such an annual anxiety, can people understand why many physicians are hesitant to turn more responsibility for health care administration over to the federal government?
