Friday, April 17, 2015

Good News



Congress repealed the Medicare SGR formula.  After 17 previous holding actions going back to 2003 the Senate clinched the approval of a bipartisan bill that repeals the Medicare sustainable growth rate formula for physician compensation and averts a 21% pay cut.  This will freeze Medicare rates to pre-April levels through June and then raise them .5% the second half of the year and will continue to increase .5 each year from 2016 to 2019.  

What does this mean to us seniors?  Well, anything that is done to stabilize or increase the Medicare provider rate will go along way towards maintaining physician access for seniors.  More and more physicians have elected not to see Medicare patients because the reimbursement rate was too low.  Hopefully this will help the situation.

2 comments:

Olga said...

Sometimes I look at medicare statements and wonder how the health care business survives. Charge: $872.97; paid $3.84; you owe $0.00. That may be a bit of exaggeration, but I don't think people without insurance can say, " here's $3.84, let's call it even," and get away with it.

oklhdan said...

That's absolutely true. If you don't have insurance you get the whole bill...which seems crazy. You already know they don't have the money for insurance premiums what makes you think they can pay the bill?