By Melissa McEver, The Brownsville Herald, Texas
Jul. 1–Doctors have received a temporary reprieve from a 10.6 percent cut in their Medicare payments that was supposed to go into effect today.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at the request of the Bush administration, will wait 10 days before paying any new Medicare claims, giving Congress a chance to take up the issue of Medicare payments when it resumes session next week.
Reimbursements to doctors for treating Medicare patients are scheduled to decrease automatically under a federal formula that ties doctors’ Medicare payments to the economy.
In recent years, Congress has frozen these cuts to Medicare payments at the last minute. But last week, the U.S. Senate rejected a bill that would have stopped the cuts.
Congress could still freeze those cuts retroactively after today, but regardless, these last-minute actions are only a temporary fix, said Dr. Linda Villarreal, an Edinburg internist and member of Texas Medical Association’s Legislative Council.
“These are just patches on a bigger problem … which is the archaic (Medicare) formula,” Villarreal said.
The 10-day delay in claims processing will be tough on Rio Grande Valley doctors, who rely heavily on Medicare and Medicaid payments, Villarreal said.
“When they delay payments for 10 days, you’re looking at three to four weeks of no cash flow, and that can be pretty devastating,” she said.
Dr. Lorenzo Pelly, a Brownsville internist, agreed.
“It puts a strain on physicians’ practices,” Pelly said. “And patients don’t wait, vendors don’t wait … we still have to pay our gasoline bills and everything else.”
CMS officials said the delay would help prevent any disruption in reimbursements to doctors if Congress later decides to stop the cuts.
Villarreal said she hoped Congress would take the additional time to think about the effect these sweeping cuts could have on Medicare patients, who might lose access to their doctors if they stop accepting Medicare.
“Maybe they’ll realize what our plight is, and that it’s a question of keeping our offices open,” she said.
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