Physician and Patient Action Needed to Avert Medicare Crisis
[Posted 10/12/06]

If Congress does not act before the end of the year, Medicare payments to physicians will be cut by 5 percent on January 1 and by a total of 37 percent over the next six years. These cuts come at a time when medical practice costs are soaring. Over the last five years, the average cost to run a medical practice has gone up at least 18 percent, yet Medicare is still paying physicians the same rates it did in 2001. By 2007, Medicare physician payment rates will effectively have fallen by more than 20 percent.

Congress needs to hear from both physicians and patients that inaction is not acceptable. Physicians, call, write, or visit with your members of Congress to express your outrage and extreme disappointment that the Republican leadership in Congress again this year failed to fix the physician payment problem. They need to understand that this is an urgent issue and that failure to reform the Medicare payment formula will force physicians to stop accepting new Medicare patients or withdraw from the program entirely.

Please urge your members of Congress to stop the 5 percent payment cuts during the post-election lame-duck session in November. Tell your members of Congress to dump the flawed SGR physician payment formula and replace it with a new formula based on the medical economic index, which would increase physician payments by 2.8 percent in 2007. Please also urge your representative to show the House leadership that he or she supports Medicare payment reform by cosigning the Medicare “Dear colleague” letters that are circulating in Congress.

To contact your members of Congress, please call AMA’s grassroots action hotline at 800/833-6354. You will be prompted to enter your zip code and will be automatically connected with your local representative.

AMA has also published a flyer that physicians can use to inform patients about the impending crisis and encourage them to call their members of Congress to demand immediate action.

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