Letters to the Editor - March 7, 2011

Headline on new Medicare board sends the wrong message

Regarding "Medicare pay panel latest target of GOP effort to repeal reform law" (Article, Feb. 7, 2011): Your biases are showing. Your headline about the measure to remove the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board provision from the "health reform" law characterizes it as an effort for repeal.

So you lump all GOP work on health reform as an attempt at repeal, and it seems to carry a tone that any such work is bad. Yet the measure is sponsored by one of our own, Rep. Phil Roe, MD (R, Tenn.), and rescinding or altering the board is supported by the AMA, which supports health reform.

So, please, just tell it straight.

This measure attempts to get rid of a panel that can only limit the cost of medical care by limiting payments to medical care providers. We would all be told to do more and receive less reimbursement. And it would be mandatory. Now you see why the AMA and others want another avenue to limit the cost of health care. Hurrah for Dr. Roe.

--Frederick Lowe, MD, Vallejo, Calif.

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E-prescribing penalty a bad sign

I always thought a fine was levied for some sort of misdeed. With this new administration, I am informed I will be fined if I don't e-prescribe for at least some of my patients. This is another example of bureaucratic intrusion creeping, but soon to be galloping, into our practice of medicine.

Maybe if we are fined enough for written prescriptions over the past 50 years, it will put a dent in our national debt.

--Thomas E. Carson, MD, Oxnard, Calif.

The print version of this content appeared in the March 14 issue of American Medical News.

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