Budget rep. wants supercommittee to take on permanent Medicare payments fix

Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) is taking the lead in urging the congressional deficit-cutting supercommittee to prevent a nearly 30 percent cut to Medicare physician payments.

Schwartz, the second highest ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee and a leader on healthcare issues, issued a "Dear Colleague" letter Wednesday morning asking her colleagues to demand a permanent fix to Medicare's Sustainable Growth Rate formula. Lawmakers for years have delayed statutory cuts to doctors' payments through short-term fixes, but doctors want a permanent fix to the payment formula that was created in 1997.

"Please join me in supporting transparency and fiscal stability for the Medicare program," Schwartz writes, "by urging the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to include a full repeal of the SGR and set out a clear path toward comprehensive payment reform in its proposal."

Fixing the formula comes with a daunting $300 billion price tag, which derailed efforts to address it in the national healthcare reform bill. But leaving the law on the books, Schwartz writes to the supercommittee, would double the price tag to almost $600 billion over the next five years or force the Medicare program to slash payments to a level that would force thousands of physicians to leave the program.

Physician groups across the country are also demanding that the supercommittee tackle the problem.

Last week, dozens of state and national medical organizations signed on to a letter drafted by the American Medical Association demanding action.

"With a 30 percent across-the-board payment cut in physician services scheduled for January 1, 2012, the implications of continuing this practice of simply putting off cuts to future years are clear. Continued access to care for our nation's senior and disabled citizens is seriously threatened," the doctors' letter reads. "The fiscally responsible course is clear. This is the time to repeal the SGR so that new payment models can be adopted that promote high quality, cost effective care."

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