A long-awaited and hard-fought bill to permanently repeal Medicare’s fatally flawed SGR formula finally is before Congress, following a milestone announcement Thursday. It’s critical to maintain the momentum in Congress: Your voice could tip the balance to pass repeal this year.
The SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act of 2014, introduced to both chambers of Congress this week, offers a fiscally prudent opportunity for lawmakers to repeal the SGR formula and put Medicare on the path toward a stable, 21st-century program that can meet the growing health care needs of the nation’s seniors.
Tell your members of Congress today that now is the time to enact repeal.
Over the past 12 years, Congress has spent $153.7 billion on payment patches rather than repealing the formula that calls for the payment cuts in the first place. That figure far exceeds the cost of permanent repeal, which the Congressional Budget Office has placed at $117 billion.
Congress is working against a March 31 deadline, at which point the SGR formula calls for a 24 percent cut to physician payments.
By contacting your lawmakers today, you send a strong signal that the nation’s physicians, seniors and finances can wait no longer for permanent SGR repeal. Tell them it is time to end the cycle of short-term payment patches that simply extend the problem and increase costs to American taxpayers.
Email your members of Congress through the AMA’s Fix Medicare Now website or the AMA’s grassroots hotline at (800) 833-6354.
