House Passes Bill to Stop Physician Payment Cuts and Increase Reimbursement 2.2% Through November
June 21, 2010 — President Obama called for a more permanent solution to the short-term fixes for Medicare physician cuts in a statement released following a 471 to 1 House vote on Thursday, June 24, 2010, to stop the 21 percent reduction in payments through November.
The legislation retroactively reverses the cut in Medicare payments to physicians that was scheduled for June 1, and boosts physician payments effective June 1 by 2.2 percent through November 30, reported House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., following the vote.
"I'm pleased that Congress has acted to ensure the security of our seniors' health care," said President Obama. "A 21-percent pay cut to physicians' payments would have forced some doctors to step seeing Medicare patients — an outcome we can all agree is unacceptable. We should also agree, as I've said in the past, that kicking these cuts down the road just isn't an adequate solution to the problem. The current system of recurring cuts and temporary fixes was passed into law more than 10 years ago. It's untenable."
The president concluded that the Medicare formula needs to be permanently reformed "in a way that attacks our fiscal problems without punishing our hard-working doctors or endangering the benefits on which so many of our seniors rely."
|
