By Dr. Julia Boothe | President of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama
This is a guest opinion column
Unless Congress acts before the end of the year, planned Medicare payment cuts will threaten Medicare beneficiaries’ access to physicians and some physician practices could be forced to close in 2023.
On Jan. 1, cuts for all physician services of 4.5 percent from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will take effect. At a time when soaring inflation has significantly increased the cost of running all businesses, including medical practices, these cuts will come precisely as more Americans are needing access to care. Outpatient volume is increasing with more patients returning to doctors’ offices after putting off routine screenings, treatments and preventive services over the last few years. Not unexpectedly, these delays are resulting in patients needing even higher levels of care.
In addition to these unfortunate cuts, there will no inflationary update for physicians in 2023. Physicians are the only healthcare providers whose Medicare payments do not automatically receive an annual inflationary adjustment.
For decades, practice expenses have outpaced Medicare payments. When adjusted for inflation, Medicare physician payments have dropped by 22 percent since 2001. Other healthcare providers, such as hospitals and nursing facilities, receive automatic inflation adjustments every year. This is unfair and does not make any sense. This inflationary imbalance also amplifies the impact of Medicare’s payment cuts and no doubt will contribute to the crisis of physician burnout.
This situation is so serious that more than one million physicians and non-physician healthcare clinicians have joined together and called on congressional leaders to protect patients by stopping these Medicare payment cuts during the congressional “lame duck” session.
Congress can do so by passing bipartisan legislation – H.R. 8800, the Supporting Medicare Providers Act. This must-pass bill would help address Medicare’s flawed payment system and stop these scheduled cuts. Physicians across the country consider this a needed first step toward reform that will make the Medicare payment system simpler, more reflective of real-world costs, and more sustainable for patient care.
Physicians deserve to be paid fairly for the cost of the care they provide, and patients deserve consistent, predictable and reliable healthcare services. That can’t happen under the current system that is financially unsustainable.
Physicians want to be able to take care of our Medicare patients in the way that our government has promised them that they would be taken care of. Right now, Medicare is not keeping that promise.
Stopping these planned Medicare payment cuts and fixing unfair inflationary adjustments will grant more access for patients to their physicians and grant physicians more ability to care for their Medicare patients.
With the deadline to act rapidly approaching, lawmakers must join together to provide stability to the Medicare payment system and support seniors’ continued access to care.
