Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since late Friday afternoon have been touting a plan to put off processing Medicare claims for 10 business days, starting Tuesday, in order to avoid paying physicians at a lower rate. The reduced physician fee rates are scheduled to go into effect Tuesday and the move is advertised as a chance to give Congress time to fix payments legislatively.

“We are writing to set the record straight regarding the payment for physician claims under the Medicare program,” Rockefeller and Schumer wrote to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt. “[T]here have been several misleading – and possibly incorrect – reports from the administration regarding actions on physician claims filed beginning July 1,” the letter says.

In a statement issued Friday, Leavitt said, “HHS will take all steps available to the department under the law to minimize the impact on providers and beneficiaries.” Later in the day, another official informed congressional offices of a “temporary hold” on processing claims.

 “It is our view that the administration is misleading the public by claiming to provide a ‘temporary hold’ on payment which is already authorized by law in order to give the appearance of being helpful to doctors in the Medicare program,” Rockefeller and Schumer wrote.

On Tuesday, Medicare fees to doctors will automatically go down 10.6 percent after a Democratic fix came one vote short of the 60 it needed to advance last Thursday. The White House also threatened to veto the bill, arguing that it weakened private health insurance options for beneficiaries in Medicare Advantage. The House passed the bill last week by a veto-proof majority.

Physician groups have reacted furiously to the Senate vote. Most notably the Texas Medical Association’s political action committee on Friday withdrew its endorsement of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) as a result of his vote against the bill.

In a dispatch sent to congressional offices late Friday afternoon, the chief legislative liaison for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Elizabeth Hall, said the private contractors that handle Medicare claims would not make any payments until July 15. Claims for physician services will be put on a “temporary hold” for the first 10 business days of July, she wrote.

All the administration is doing, Rockefeller and Schumer maintain, is following existing law, not taking extra steps to help doctors and their patients.

“Current law already requires that all Medicare claims submitted by physicians be withheld for 13 days prior to payment (for claims submitted electronically),” Rockefeller and Schumer wrote.

Indeed, CMS’s Hall explains in her e-mail to Capitol Hill that the law does not permit payments for electronically filed claims to be made in fewer than 14 calendar days.

In a related development Monday, CMS announced that Medicare payments to physicians would go down another 5.4 percent in 2009.