Access to affordable, high-quality health care is essential — particularly for more vulnerable Americans such as seniors and the disabled. Unfortunately, a dysfunctional Medicare physician compensation system is threatening to undermine access to care.

More than one-third of North Carolinians face difficulties accessing primary care doctors. Even worse, on its current path, the Tar Heel state is projected to be short 7,725 doctors overall by 2030, including 1,885 too few primary care providers.

Physicians have spent more than a decade pushing for changes to the Medicare physician payment system so that they have the financial resources to keep caring for the nation’s oldest citizens. But the necessary reforms still haven’t come to fruition.

Many leaders feel physician pay is not keeping up with the rising cost of practice, and CMS and other payer moves indicate this trend could continue.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has introduced the Physician Fee Stabilization Act. The bill would increase the budget-neutrality threshold under the Medicare physician payment schedule to $53 million in 2026, up from $20 million. The bill also would provide regular indexing of the threshold to the Medicare Economic Index.

Medicare payments to physicians should be based on inflation instead of simply cutting reimbursement to doctors, according to the American Medical Association.

The AMA urged the administration to work with Congress to enact a permanent, annual inflation-based update to Medicare physician payments.

With physicians yet again facing a Medicare payment cut, the AMA spearheaded a letter to congressional leaders that all 50 state medical societies and 76 other health organizations joined in signing.

A broken Medicare physician payment system, exacerbated by Biden administration cuts and ignored by our presidential candidates, could trigger a doomsday scenario in our already dire national doctor shortage.