Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights opposes Medicare payment cuts

Due to Congressional inaction, Medicare’s reimbursement rates to doctors for their care of our nation’s elderly population will be cut a staggering 21 percent today. This is a result of an unwillingness or inability – pick your poison – to permanently secure the Medicare payment formula system or to even temporarily extend the patchwork fix already in place (the Sustainable Growth Rate formula or SGR). The Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights supports a strong Medicare and a fair formula that will provide physicians with the resources they need to treat America’s seniors and also allow patients and physicians to negotiate any differences in cost to ensure patients get the care they need.

“What are physicians to do? What are senior citizens to do?”

Former president of the American Medical Association and current spokesman for the Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights, Dr. Donald Palmisano, made the following statement on the Medicare payment cuts:

“What are physicians to do? What are senior citizens to do?

“As Congress debates, seniors are at peril of losing the medical care they desperately need. Doctors are already providing care to the nation’s seniors at a reduced rate, but this latest cut makes treating those on Medicare financially impossible for doctors, nurses, and hospitals.

“And a one-time patch isn’t going to fix the problem for long. Although more than 40 million Americans rely on Medicare for their well-being and as enrollment is expected to explode as baby-boomers age and retire, Congress has recently proposed gutting Medicare – to the tune of $500 billion. There’s no way Medicare can be cut and still provide the medical service our most vulnerable populations need. Congress must fund Medicare so that it becomes solvent, pays physicians for the work and treatments they provide, and give seniors the peace of mind they deserve.

“Unfortunately, when medicine is subject to the limits of government-control and price-fixing, patients suffer. This isn’t just the case for Medicare, but also for Medicaid, or any other government controlled healthcare system – no matter what it’s called. Congress must do what it can to empower patients and physicians in healthcare, while limiting the role of bureaucrats.”