Urge Congress Now to Prevent Medicare Pay Cut Scheduled for January 1

December 20th, 2012

With just 13 days remaining until Jan. 1, Congress has yet to negotiate a solution to prevent the 26.5 percent cut in Medicare physician payments required under the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula.  During this critical period, the AGS urges you to contact your members of Congress and ask that they address the flawed SGR formula. 

The SGR has mandated physician fee cuts almost every year for the past decade and future cuts in payments are likely to discourage promising candidates from pursuing careers in geriatrics and may also exacerbate the loss of practicing geriatricians.  In addition to doctors, physician assistants and advanced practice nurses would also be subject to these cuts.  

Furthermore, Medicare payments continuously fail to keep up with inflation or cover many of the services -- such as care coordination -- that are integral to providing high quality care to older adults. The flawed SGR should be repealed and replaced with a more predictable and fairer system of updating physician payments, including appropriate and higher values for primary care services. 

A new payment system needs to fully recognize the importance of geriatrics in the care of the sickest Medicare patients - those who cost the system the most money. The kind of high-quality care provided by geriatricians and the interdisciplinary geriatrics care team requires that Medicare changes how it pays for services. 

Please take action now and urge your U.S. Representative and Senators to prevent another disruption in Medicare payments and to prioritize the health and well-being of older Americans.