Here is the latest in the battle over how to pay for the cost of not cutting the Physician’s fee schedule by 10.6%. From the NAHU website:
The AP (7/2, Yen) reports that “[t]wo powerful health trade groups will begin airing dueling ads this week in their fight over Medicare, hoping to influence Congress as lawmakers face pressure to reverse scheduled cuts in doctor fees.” America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), “a trade group of private insurers, is siding with Senate Republicans and the White House in their standoff with Democrats over” the “measure that would halt the cuts by trimming payments to private insurers.” The American Medical Association (AMA), however, said that “it was airing new television and radio ads in six states through the week that target a group of senators who blocked action on the proposed legislation” to avoid physician payment cuts, which “passed the House, but stalled in the Senate last week amid a veto threat by President Bush.”
“Republicans object to cuts the [House] bill would make to private health insurance plans in the Medicare Advantage program,” according to The Hill (7/2, Young). Republicans “also complain that the Democratic leadership tried to force the bill through Congress without adequate debate.” The Hill notes that the AMA’s ads against the Republican senators go “beyond bad public relations and could cost the candidates campaign dollars.” For example, some of the ads “call out by name 10 senators who voted against the bill.” In addition, “[m]edical societies in Texas, Mississippi, and New Hampshire — states where GOP senators face difficult reelection challenges this year — are taking a hard look at whether to withhold their support for incumbents who voted against the bill on June 26.”
In the face of these ads, “Republicans find themselves on the defensive, trying to explain their votes to angry doctors and worried seniors,” Congressional Quarterly (7/2, Wayne) adds. In fact, “[m]ost Republicans, including the president, support increasing Medicare payments to doctors,” but not by “trimming costs” to private insurers “in the Medicare Advantage program.”
The AMA, however, remains “outraged, and [began] running television ads on the issue Tuesday,” The Politico (7/1, Grim, Rogers) reported. “All sides say they want to forestall the physician pay cut. But paying for the fix has grown into a larger ideological battle over the direction of Medicare and how best to both rein in the costs of medical equipment and drugs and balance demands for private market alternatives to traditional government-run care for the elderly.”
In the Wall Street Journal‘s (7/1) Washington Wire, Sarah Lueck wrote that the “AMA’s ad campaign raises pressure on senators to change their votes when the Senate returns to work after a week-long July Fourth recess.” In fact, “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has already said he will bring up the bill again.” Lueck noted that “Democrats fell one vote short of the 60 needed to move the measure forward just before the recess,” even though “[a]ll Democrats present for the vote supported the legislation.”
Despite the fact that “Medicare won’t process any July physician billings until July 15 at the earliest, giving Congress enough time to work out a way to reinstate physician payment at the June 30 level,” the AMA has not been placated, MedPage Today (7/1, Peck) reported. Showing the group’s dissatisfaction, the AMA ad messages states, “A group of U.S. senators voted to protect the powerful insurance companies’ huge profits at the expense of Medicare patients’ access to doctors.” In addition to the AMA’s efforts to prevent the cuts, “the AARP has turned up the heat on Congress with its ‘Keep Medicare Fair’ campaign,” which maintains that while “physicians deserve to be paid a fair fee for services,…Congress should not finance physician fees by increasing Part B premiums.” Both the AMA and the AARP recommend instead that Congress “cut payments to the Medicare Advantage program.”
