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3 Responses to “Bush administration delaying Medicare fee cut”

1. JohnKonop says:

   July 1, 2008 at 6:33 am

   Dems: Bush ‘hold’ on Medicare fee cuts is ‘misleading’

   THEHILL-Two senior Democratic senators protested Monday that the Bush administration’s claim that it is taking action to delay a 10 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors is nothing more than a ruse.

   Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since late Friday afternoon have been touting a plan to put off processing Medicare claims for 10 business days, starting Tuesday, in order to avoid paying physicians at a lower rate. The reduced physician fee rates are scheduled to go into effect Tuesday and the move is advertised as a chance to give Congress time to fix payments legislatively.

   However, according to Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), HHS’s pronouncement is just wordplay designed to provide political cover to Senate Republicans who opposed a Democratic bill to stop the cut from taking place.

   “We are writing to set the record straight regarding the payment for physician claims under the Medicare program,” Rockefeller and Schumer wrote to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt. “[T]here have been several misleading – and possibly incorrect – reports from the administration regarding actions on physician claims filed beginning July 1,” the letter says.

   In a statement issued Friday, Leavitt said, “HHS will take all steps available to the department under the law to minimize the impact on providers and beneficiaries.” Later in the day, another official informed congressional offices of a “temporary hold” on processing claims.

   “It is our view that the administration is misleading the public by claiming to provide a ‘temporary hold’ on payment which is already authorized by law in order to give the appearance of being helpful to doctors in the Medicare program,” Rockefeller and Schumer wrote.

   On Tuesday, Medicare fees to doctors will automatically go down 10.6 percent after a Democratic fix came one vote short of the 60 it needed to advance last Thursday. The White House also threatened to veto the bill, arguing that it weakened private health insurance options for beneficiaries in Medicare Advantage. The House passed the bill last week by a veto-proof majority.

   Physician groups have reacted furiously to the Senate vote. Most notably the Texas Medical Association’s political action committee on Friday withdrew its endorsement of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) as a result of his vote against the bill.

   In a dispatch sent to congressional offices late Friday afternoon, the chief legislative liaison for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Elizabeth Hall, said the private contractors that handle Medicare claims would not make any payments until July 15. Claims for physician services will be put on a “temporary hold” for the first 10 business days of July, she wrote.

   All the administration is doing, Rockefeller and Schumer maintain, is following existing law, not taking extra steps to help doctors and their patients.

   “Current law already requires that all Medicare claims submitted by physicians be withheld for 13 days prior to payment (for claims submitted electronically),” Rockefeller and Schumer wrote.

   Indeed, CMS’s Hall explains in her e-mail to Capitol Hill that the law does not permit payments for electronically filed claims to be made in fewer than 14 calendar days.

   In a related development Monday, CMS announced that Medicare payments to physicians would go down another 5.4 percent in 2009.
2. R. Garth Kirkwood MD says:

   July 1, 2008 at 8:17 am

   Whatever finally happens with this fiasco, its basis will be to benefit the “business” of medicine as opposed to the “medicine” of medicine.

   These people in Washington DC, whether democrat or republican, act in accordance with the following: Appease the health care economic marketplace.

   In the comments on the original Town-Hall article, someone said that Senator Obama proposes single-payer health care. I do not believe that is correct. My understanding of his proposals is that he retains the health insurance companies.

   There will be no true health care reform coming from either Senator McCain or Senator Obama because of the stranglehold that health care corporations have upon them and our government.

   The substantive difference regarding the health care issue between the two presidential candidates is that Senator Obama’s rhetoric is so much better. But beneficial health care reform coming from either of these two is a pipe dream because neither removes the “business” of medicine, i.e., the dollar bill, from its position of primacy in our health care thinking.

   This discussion about fee cuts, private contractors, existing law etc. etc. is just obfuscating business-political rhetoric designed to block true understanding by ordinary people of the cancer, which plagues our health care system.

   R. Garth Kirkwood MD
   http://www.equalhealthcareforall.com
   doctork@equalhealthcareforall.com
3. Bill says:

   July 1, 2008 at 11:15 pm

   F.Y.I. I don’t even want the politicians and the bureaucrats even THINKING about health care. these “saviours” can kiss my grits. They’re all a bunch of crooks and liars. And we’re talking about trillions of dollars missing. Where’s the ourtrage?

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