Lobbying groups for doctors are urging Congress to reverse impending cuts to their Medicare pay in the new year, warning that slashing pay will worsen physician staffing shortages around the country.
Health care providers have urged Congress to prevent cuts that go into effect Jan. 1, which they say will eventually limit older adults’ access to doctors. Hospitals are worried they won’t be able to hire more doctors in 2024, instead putting more work on staff, according to Arjun Venkatesh, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.
“We are in a health care system right now that’s quite broken; where hospitals are at an extreme capacity, access to care is really impossible,” Venkatesh said. “And if you put payment cuts on top of that, that means that we have even fewer folks to take care of people.”
Medicare moved in November to cut payments to physicians and clinicians by an average of 1.25% next year. It’s not the first cut doctors have faced: adjusting for inflation, Medicare physician payments have declined 26% from 2001 to 2023, according to datafrom the American Medical Association.
The AMA and other organizations have made reversing these cuts a major priority. AMA revealed on Oct. 30 that they’ve sent 150 letters to Congress advocating for this cause.
Both the House and Senate left Washington for the year without addressing these planned Medicare cuts, so they are set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2024.
Cuts to Medicare pay don’t typically mean seniors lose access to their doctors, but could mean physicians see fewer new Medicare patients, Martin Corry, chair of government relations and public policy at Hooper Lundy & Bookman, a health care law firm, said.
“But, it can obviously affect how many Medicare patients they want to serve going forward,” said Corry, who used to be the special assistant to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
‘Crisis’ Cuts
This is the third consecutive year the government has reduced physician reimbursements, Josh Cooper, vice president of government relations and economics health policy at the American College of Radiology, said. This is why he calls the current situation a ‘crisis.’
“The effects of these payment cuts each year are big,” Venkatesh said. “They affect every kind and every part of health care.”
There’s a long-term solution to this current crisis, according to Cooper, and that’s comprehensive Medicare physician payment reform, which the physician community is already advocating for.
“Hopefully, it can be passed by the end of 2024,” Cooper said. “It is hoped that as a result of that legislation, we won’t have to keep going through this annual exercise of trying to get Congress to alleviate cuts that are coming from CMS.”
Relief or Reform
When Congress previously failed to avoid Medicare pay cuts, lawmakers increased payments retroactive to Jan. 1 to reduce the effect on doctors, according to Corry.
However, these are not typical times, Corry said. The 118th Congress is on track to being one of the least productive in modern history.
“That’s what everyone would hope,” Corry said. “I just don’t think we can say for sure.”
There are two bills gaining the most support from health care groups eager for Congress to address this as soon as they return from winter recess.
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) proposed a bill (
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) has sought to tie the Medicare physician payment schedule to the Medical Economic Index, which reflects the changing costs of running a medical practice. Health care organizations have broadly supported it as a way to reform the outdated Medicare payment schedule. Ruiz’s legislation (
“We’re hoping that next year, when Congress has an opportunity to focus a little more on this particular topic, that they’ll pay a little bit more attention to that piece of legislation,” Cooper said.
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