Coming Medicare Cuts Worry Doctors

WASHINGTON —  With Medicare scheduled to cut billions of dollars from doctors’ payments, a group representing physicians is urging Congress to restore the money before elderly patients have trouble finding doctors.

Unless Congress acts by Nov. 1, “more physicians will be forced to make the difficult decision to stop taking new Medicare patients into their practices,” Dr. Donald Palmisano, president-elect of the American Medical Assn., said Tuesday. The next round of cuts, which take effect Jan. 1, will be announced next month.

Palmisano said doctors already have taken a 5.4% cut and are facing an additional 12% in cuts, equaling about $11 billion, over the next three years. At the current rate of cuts and inflation, Medicare doctor payments in 2005 will be below the 1991 level, Palmisano said.

He said an AMA survey found that 24% of physicians already have placed limits on the number of Medicare patients they treat or plan to institute limits soon.

The reductions are required under a Medicare payment formula that relies on the state of the economy, which is struggling.

Lawmakers and the Bush administration have said the payment formula is unfair and have expressed interest in finding a remedy for doctors. But the White House has balked at lawmakers’ plans to send extra money to hospitals and other health providers as well.

The House included $30 billion for Medicare providers as part of a prescription drug bill it passed.

The Senate was unable to reach agreement on a prescription drug bill, but lawmakers have been pushing a separate bill that would send $43 billion to Medicare providers, including money for health maintenance organizations, nursing homes and rural hospitals.