Manufactured out of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the goal of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) was to limit the growth in Medicare spending to keep it in line with inflation. Under the SGR, if overall physician payment costs exceeded target expenditures, a cut to Medicare physician payment was triggered.
Following AMA advocacy in leading the charge to reform the Medicare payment system, a bipartisan group in the U.S. House of Representatives has introduced a bill that would provide a 4.7% payment update in 2025.
Congress should implement an annual, inflation-based payment update as part of the Medicare payment system for doctors, two rheumatologists write.
Doctors still seeing Medicare patients struggle to stay in private practice because of Medicare payment cuts.
Doctors facing yet another Medicare payment cut—this one set to take effect in January—have a prescription for Congress: fix this broken payment model.
Longstanding issues in Medicare’s physician payment system have put the program on an unstable, unsustainable path, threatening to further undermine access to primary care — particularly in underserved communities that are already reeling from a shortage of doctors.
Imagine a healthcare system where patients wait weeks for appointments, doctors are stretched to their breaking point, and independent medical practices are forced to close their doors. Unfortunately, you don’t have to imagine it because all this is happening right now in Alabama and across the country.
Ambitious efforts by some of the nation’s largest retailers to open health clinics nationwide have met with disappointing results, which underscore the precarious financial reality of care delivery today. And it sparks an obvious question for policymakers to consider: If retail giants can’t make today’s care delivery model work financially, how on earth can physicians in private practice?
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing a 2.8% cut to physician Medicare payments starting Jan. 1. At the same time, CMS also estimates that the cost of practicing medicine next year—paying clinical and administrative staff, rent and purchasing equipment and supplies—will rise by 3.6%.
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.
We’re dedicated to raising awareness of Medicare physician payment system problems so that we can work towards solutions that protect physician practices and patients’ access to care. It’s vital that patients and physicians use their voices to advocate for change.
Click the button below to learn about the various ways to get involved in the fight to Fix Medicare Now.