Your Medicare Payments Will Be Cut 26% Unless You Act Now!
[Posted 12/01/05]

Your Medicare payments will be cut 26 percent in the next six years while your practice costs increase 15 percent. On January 1, 2006, the cuts begin with a 4.4 percent reduction.

While Medicare is reducing physician payments because of a flawed physician payment formula, all other Medicare providers will get increases in 2006.

We know we have sent this message before. But this is the critical moment. Phone calls help, but we urge you to “storm” your local Congressional office in the next week. Arrange with your colleagues to take no more than an hour away from your offices. Together, go to your Congressperson’s office. Say you have patients waiting and just need five minutes of his or her time.

Tell your Congressperson or district office chief of staff that you want the Congressperson to speak directly to Speaker Dennis Hastert and the Budget Reconciliation Conference Committee members about your concerns. It is not enough for your Congressperson to sympathize with you. Your member needs to tell the leaders of Congress that seniors in California are already having difficulty getting appointments and finding a doctor. If Congress doesn’t act before January, physicians will be forced to stop seeing Medicare patients and the access-to-care problem will only get worse.

Please join CMA physicians from across California and tell your Representative just how serious this situation is for patients and physicians.

Contact: Elizabeth McNeil, 415/882-3376 or emcneil@cmanet.org