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Committee on Ways and Means For Immediate Release Ways and Means Urges Administration to Modify Doctors’ Spending Projections In a letter today to Thomas Scully, Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Rep. Bill Thomas [R-Ca], Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. Nancy Johnson [R-Ct], Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, make a strong case for the Bush Administration to reconsider the data and assumptions it used in projecting Medicare physician payment rates. As currently estimated, by 2005 decreases in payments to physicians would bring them back to the 1993 level, while medical and administrative costs continue to rise. “Congress and the Administration share the goal of better care for patients,” said Chairman Thomas. “But because of its inaccuracies and unsupported assumptions, CMS should modify the physician baseline. We will follow administrative adjustments by CMS with legislative solutions.” “This is about the ability of seniors to get quality health care," said Chairman Johnson. "If Medicare payments to doctors remain too low, over time high-caliber students will no longer enter the profession and senior care will decline in quality and availability." Citing factual and conceptual errors in the way CMS has estimated the cost of payments to physicians over ten years, Reps. Thomas and Johnson urged CMS to take into account significant factors that their current calculations overlook. In particular, the letter calls upon CMS to: change the way it measures physician productivity revise its assumptions about how doctors will respond to lower payments take account of issues such as tax changes that also affect doctors’ income more accurately measure the cost of professional liability insurance for doctors include the costs of all patient benefits, such as new medical procedures use more current information to develop more accurate spending targets for 1998 and 1999. Patients could face considerable delays in receiving treatment over the next five years under cuts in payments to physicians under the Sustainable Growth Rate system for Medicare. Fewer doctors could be willing to take part in Medicare as their costs go up and payment rates go down. Click on the link for the letter from Chairman Thomas and Chairwoman Johnson. |