(INDIANAPOLIS) – On Tuesday, the Senate passed a $10 billion, 30-day stopgap measure to maintain unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, provide funding for highway programs and it delays a 21% pay cut to physicians for services to all Medicare patients. Over the weekend Medicare contractors had been instructed to hold all claims for services to patients with Medicare for ten days, while the Senate worked on passing Tuesday’s “extender” bill. This would have accounted for almost $13 billion in delayed payments to providers.
Dr. John McGoff, an emergency physician and a candidate for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, points out that since 2002, this has become an annual travesty which our government forces doctors to endure and in the near future could create a severe shortage of medical providers to whom Medicare patients can turn for their care.
“In 1965, when Medicare was passed into law, the medical community agreed to participate in a government program designed to assist senior citizens,” Dr. McGoff says. “For its part, the government created a uniform fee schedule and since 1997 has used a sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula to determine the amount it will pay for medical services. If the Senate cannot find a way to resolve this problem, doctors who treat Medicare patients are facing an immediate 21% cut in payments at the beginning of April.”
The SGR formula affects senior citizens who depend on Medicare, and military families and retirees whose Tricare health insurance payments are tied to Medicare payment levels.
“This cut in payments does not just affect doctors and medical care facilities, but it will have a rippling consequence that can cause a health care meltdown for seniors, baby boomers and military families.” Dr. McGoff warns, “When someone’s elderly parents can’t find a doctor, or when a local clinic turns away a soldier’s child because the clinic no longer takes Tricare, the military’s insurance, then it explodes into a national crises. We have brave men and women who are putting their lives on the line every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a colonel in the Air Guard, the last thing I want is for them to worry about health care for their families back home.”
According to the American Medical Association, if Congress had fixed this problem in 2005 when physicians faced a 3.3% cut, the cost of permanent reform would have been $49 billion. Today, Medicare projects a 21% cut for this year and the price tag of the reform has skyrocketed to $210 billion.
“This is the quintessential example of legislative disorganization and fiscal irresponsibility. The American people are tired of these short-term solutions.” McGoff says. “Sadly, many of our elected officials have been in Washington so long they see nothing wrong with handling matters this way. They refuse to deal with problems today. They are content with putting a band-aid on a problem of this magnitude rather than developing a real solution. All this does is prolong the inevitable and it results in higher costs. In this case, it also jeopardizes the health of our citizens by decreasing health care options and access.”
National statistics show that an increasing number of doctors are limiting the number of Medicare patients that they will accept. As recently as two months ago, the primary care physicians affiliated with the Mayo Clinic in Glendale, Arizona stopped accepting Medicare patients. More than 3,000 patients – mostly seniors – now have to pay cash for the medical services they receive.
“Seniors must have access to their doctors, and if they don’t, they will skip getting care,” Dr. McGoff stresses. “As a member of Congress I will do everything within my power to watch out for the interest of our seniors, veterans and active duty soldiers and their families. This situation
highlights what is broken in our health care system and demonstrates the all too familiar work ethic of Congress.”
Indiana’s 5th Congressional District contains all of Grant, Hamilton, Hancock, Huntington, Miami, Tipton and Wabash counties and parts of Howard, Johnson, Marion and Shelby counties.
