Group to petition over bill's cuts in Medicare payments
Published: 2010-07-14 20:43:22By: Carl Kieke | Report News | April 5, 2010
Members of the Texas Medical Association have created a petition to be sent to Congress to get relief from cuts in Medicare reimbursement.
The recently signed health care bill will reduce reimbursement to physicians by 21 percent. Physicians are saying they cannot handle any more reduction in their return.
“They have passed my ability to compensate for that with other patients,” Dr. Austin King, a practicing physician and TMA board member, said at a news conference Monday.
Among other problems, King said reimbursements from many managed care contracts are tied to Medicare reimbursements, meaning they also will go down.
“How am I going to continue to see Medicare patients, whom I love?” he said. “I will continue to treat my Medicare patients that I have right now, but I can’t accept any more. No one else can, either. We can’t sustain cuts like this and keep our doors open.”
“For a Medicare patient, a doctor can mean everything — independence, hope and security,” Maureen Trotter, president of Taylor Jones Haskell Callahan County Medical Society, said. “Medicare makes it possible. Physicians treating their patients, that relationship is very important, too.
“The Medicare reimbursement and this bill that we want to fix not only includes Medicare patients, which are our citizens over 65, it also includes disabled and Tricare.”
Congress has enacted several “Band-Aid” fixes over the last 10 years, King said. The petition and an accompanying letter will ask Congress to come up with a permanent solution.
“I’m hoping it will make Congress finally realize that people want this fee schedule to be permanently fixed, not keep on going with this Ponzi scheme and pushing it back year after year,” he said.
Part of the letter reads: “This year alone, Congress passed two Band-Aids instead of coming up with a permanent solution. We need more than Band-Aids. We need more than sutures. We need a complete transplant. You created this disease, and only you can cure it.”
The measures of the bill will not take effect until later this month. However, the Senate is now in recess and will have only two days to come up with a fix once they return, King said.