Medicare Reimbursement Rates 2012

Congress has less than 90 days to stop the 29.4% Cuts in Medicare/Tricare Physician Reimbursements coming in January 2012. The 112th US Congress has totally failed to do anything about the cuts in Medicare/Tricare payments to physicians mandated by the Sustained Growth Rate (SGR) formula to be imposed in 2012. Since the Sustained Growth Rate (SGR) formula used to determine Medicare and Tricare physician reimbursements became an issue in 2002, rather than fixing the problem, the US Congress has chosen to "band aid" the problem with annual suspensions of the SGR implementation and providing patches to at least maintain reimbursements at prior year levels. The 111th Congress made the process a joke with short term extensions that caused much confusion and wasted taxpayer dollars. The 112th Congress has simply done NOTHING! Unless the Congress acts with either a band-aid fix or with a permanent fix, the SGR now mandates a 29.4% cut in physician reimbursements effective 1 JAN. Access to quality care is the #1 healthcare problem faced by members of the military community whether active duty or retired. Deployed troops shouldn't have to worry whether their doctor will refuse to see their sick spouse or child because of these large payment cuts. To urge your elected officials to sponsor legislation to replace the SGR with a more realistic computation that will at least match the Consumer Price Index or some other workable index you can use USDR's preformatted editable message at http://capwiz.com/usdr/issues/?style=D&. [Source: USDR Action
Alert 20 Sep 2011 ++]

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