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It\u0092s not a pretty process, but a deal seems to be shaping up to stave of the start of a 21% cut in Medicare fees paid to doctors.<\/p>\nIt\u0092s not a pretty process, but a deal seems to be shaping up to stave of the start of a 21% cut in Medicare fees paid to doctors.<\/p>\n
The cuts were due to kick in today because Congress failed to pass a temporary extension as a result of objections by Sen. Jim Bunning to a bill that also contained job measures and other health-care provisions. But the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency that runs Medicare, has put a hold for 10 business days on physician Medicare claims, in effect giving Congress two more weeks to work things out before the payment cuts affect reimbursements to doctors.<\/p>\n
To make legislation happen, Republicans now are pledging to get a temporary fix through. The House approved its version of the bill last week but Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, balked at adding to the deficit. The Senate now may have to use a longer process to avoid Bunning\u0092s objections. Here\u0092s more from the Associated Press<\/a>. <\/p>\n All this adds a bit more drama to what has been a routine stalling action<\/a> by Congress since 2003. The Medicare cuts started off as deficit reduction measure, but after many delays, the bite on docs grew too large for Congress to actually allow them to go into effect. On the other hand, if Congress eliminates the planned reductions permanently, as urged by the AMA and other doctors\u0092 groups, it would add billions in Medicare costs to the defcit. <\/p>\n The AMA warned the situation could become a \u0093meltdown\u0094<\/a> in medical services for seniors. <\/p>\n It\u0092s not a pretty process, but a deal seems to be shaping up to stave of the start of a 21% cut in Medicare fees paid to doctors. The cuts were due to kick in today because Congress failed to pass a temporary extension as a result of objections by Sen. Jim Bunning to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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