AMA survey: Senior access at risk if Medicare cuts doctor pay 10%

A bill to reauthorize a popular children's health insurance program could serve as the legislative vehicle to stop physician reimbursement cuts.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. June 18, 2007.

Washington -- If the nearly 10% cut to Medicare physician pay goes through as planned in January 2008, the physicians who start tapering off or ending their acceptance of new beneficiaries are expected to outnumber the doctors who don't.

That is one of the central conclusions of an American Medical Association Member Connect survey released earlier this month. When nearly 9,000 member and nonmember physicians were asked in May how they would react to the expected reduction, 60% said they would either decrease the number of Medicare patients they would accept into their practices for the first time or stop seeing new Medicare patients altogether. Forty percent of the respondents said they would take one of these steps with beneficiaries who are established patients.

These figures show that Congress must act to avoid a patient access crisis by stopping next year's reduction and the eight annual reimbursement cuts that would follow it under current law, said AMA Board of Trustees Chair Cecil B. Wilson, MD.

"As physicians brace for nine years of steep payment cuts, it will be extremely difficult for them to continue accepting new Medicare patients into their practices," he said. "The baby boomers begin entering the program in 2010, and the Medicare cuts increase the likelihood that there may not be enough doctors to care for the huge influx of new Medicare patients."

To help bring this point home to lawmakers and others, the AMA this month launched a media and public relations campaign against the cuts. The effort, to which the Association has committed at least $2 million to start, begins with "National House Call" events in two states and print advertisements in Capitol Hill newspapers urging lawmakers to stop the reductions.