Bipartisan 'doc fix' bill introduced

Reps. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) and Joe Heck (R-Nev.) will take another stab at permanently repealing the Medicare payment rate that constantly threatens doctors with substantial payment cuts.

The bipartisan duo introduced a bill Wednesday to repeal the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. The bill aims to replace the SGR with a system that rewards doctors based on the health of their patients, rather than paying for each service a doctor performs.

Schwartz has introduced similar legislation in the past — also with bipartisan co-sponsors — but the high cost of permanent repeal has sidelined those bills.

Heck said he was encouraged by projections released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated slowing growth in healthcare costs. The cost of a temporary SGR patch fell to $138 billion in the latest CBO figures. The drop "bodes well" for getting permanent repeal done soon, Heck said at a news conference Wednesday.

Schwartz said there's no reason for Congress to wait until the end of the year, when the latest temporary patch is set to expire, before tackling the problem permanently. She and Heck also said they'd like to see SGR repeal as one in a series of incremental steps toward Medicare reform, rather than packaging it with a broader — and more controversial — overhaul.

Each time a temporary SGR patch expires, doctors are threatened with a cut in their Medicare payments of nearly 30 percent. Congress routinely postpones the cuts, which allows them to grow larger, and the cost of continuous short-term fixes adds up to much more than the cost of a permanent solution.

---