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Rand Paul Supports Doc Bail-Out: ‘Physicians Should Be Allowed To Make A Comfortable Living’
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Karma Policeman |
| Last Edited | Karma Policeman May 20, 2010 12:08pm |
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| Category | Blog Entry |
| Author | Igor Volsky |
| News Date | Thursday, May 20, 2010 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | As Democrats work to prevent a 21% pay cut to doctors treating Medicare patients, they may find an unlikely ally in hard-nosed libertarian Senate candidate Rand Paul, who just won an upset victory in the GOP Kentucky primary. The cut is the fault of the so-called sustainable growth rate formula (SGR), which Congress created in 1997 to match increases in physician payments under Medicare Part B to the growth in the GDP. SGR has threatened to cut Medicare reimbursements for nearly a decade and Congress has been preventing any cuts in payment without fixing the problem permanently. Each year the problem just piles onto itself – so what was a 2% cut back in 2002 has mushroomed exponentially into a 21% cut due June 1st.
In November, the House voted to replace the current SGR with a formula that would give doctors an annual payment increase equal to 1% more than the growth in the GDP (2% more for primary and preventive care physicians). But Democrats, concerned about that proposal’s high price tag (and worried that Republicans would add the cost of the proposal to price tag of the health care law), are now proposing a multi-year patch that would prevent the cuts from going into effect but do nothing to address the underlining problem. |
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