Senate Punts on Medicare/TRICARE Fix

Despite a strong push from MOAA, the American Medical Association and others, the Senate failed to muster enough votes this week to repeal the flawed statutory formula that will impose a 21% cut in Medicare and TRICARE payments to doctors this coming January unless the law is changed.
Earlier this week on Oct 20, MOAA President VADM Norb Ryan Jr. (USN-Ret) was one of three major association leaders invited by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) to speak at a press conference to highlight the importance of passing Stabenow's "Medicare Physician Fairness Act" (S. 1776) to protect against repeated cuts in 2010 and subsequent years.
"The current flawed formula for Medicare doctor payments puts every military beneficiary at risk, because military TRICARE payments are tied to Medicare's," said Ryan, speaking at the press conference in the U.S. Capitol building.
"Access to health care already is the single biggest problem for military beneficiaries of all ages," Ryan asserted. "The 21% cut to Medicare and TRICARE payments called for under current law would make that problem exponentially worse by causing large numbers of doctors to stop seeing elderly and military patients. The last thing troops in combat should have to worry about is whether their sick spouse or child can find a doctor to treat them."
Ryan said MOAA members already had generated more than 16,000 messages in the space of four days urging their legislators to support Stabenow's legislation.
Stabenow said she introduced her bill to get Congress "to rethink how we look at physician care and physician payments." She said Congress has acted to stop such cuts seven times in the past, but most have only been one-year fixes that necessitated reversing even bigger cuts the following year. "We need to stop the band-aid approach, be honest about [future budgets], and lay a foundation for real physician payment reform."
"I want to thank the Military Officers Association of America for their strong support," said Dr. J. James Rohack, President of the American Medical Association, "to preserve access and choice for seniors and military beneficiaries, now and in the future. Current law requires not only a 21% payment cut in 2010, but a cumulative 40% cut over the next six years. With millions of baby boomers coming into Medicare eligibility in the next two years, we must repeal this broken formula."
Ryan signed MOAA letters to every senator on October 20, urging them to vote for S. 1776, but the vote failed after several senators expressed concern about how to pay for the bill, which would cost $250 billion over the next 10 years.
After the failed vote, Senate leaders pledged to find a way to approve and fund at least a one-year fix before the end of December to ensure the 21% cut in Medicare and TRICARE payments won't go into effect.
The problem with this approach is that current law requires compounding annual cuts - forcing a 26% payment cut in January 2011 - so putting off a permanent fix only increases the cost of doing that later.
MOAA will continue to press for action, not only to reverse the scheduled cut for 2010 but to change the underlying law that causes this annually recurring threat to seniors' and military beneficiaries' health care access.