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Doctors face steep Medicare cuts if congress fails to act
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
November 29th, 2011
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
November 29th, 2011
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
Unless Congress acts before January 1, doctors will again face steep Medicare cuts. The cuts could possibly undermine health care for millions of seniors and disabled people. It's yet another sign of governmental dysfunction: The cuts are the consequence of a 1990s budget law that failed to control spending but was never repealed.
The much vaunted "super committee" breakdown leaves the "doc fix" unresolved with time running out.
"I don't see how primary care doctors could take anywhere near like a 27-percent pay cut and continue to function," Dr. Don Klitgaard says. Klitgaard is a family physician at a small town Iowa medical center. "I assume there's going to be a temporary fix, because the health care system is going to implode without it."
"The threat of a huge cut makes it very difficult to continue down this road," Klitgaard says, adding "it's almost comical" lawmakers would let the situation get so far out of hand.
The main options now before Congress consist either of a one-year or two-year fix.
The chief issue is the cost. Congress used to add it to the federal deficit, but lawmakers can't get away with that in these fiscally austere times. They must now find about $22 billion in offsets for the one-year option, $35 billion for the two-year version. A permanent fix would cost about $300 billion over 10 years, which makes it the most likely scenario.
"It's going to be a real challenge, and there's not a lot of time to play ping-pong," says a lobbyist who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It's entirely possible given past performance that Congress misses the deadline."
Time is running out for lawmakers. "They have to come up with a solution, and they will have to appear to pay for that solution, and that will be contentious," economist Robert Reischauer says, one of the public trustees who oversees Medicare and Social Security financing.
A nonpartisan panel advising lawmakers is recommending that doctors share the pain of a permanent fix with a 10-year freeze for primary care physicians and cuts followed by a freeze for specialists.
While the Obama administration says seniors and their doctors have nothing to fear, doctors are becoming increasingly irritated about dealing with Medicare.
© 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.