{"id":546284,"date":"2010-04-28T18:56:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T22:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=83461"},"modified":"2010-04-28T18:56:55","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T22:56:55","slug":"a-five-year-medicare-%e2%80%98doc-fix%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/546284","title":{"rendered":"A Five-Year Medicare \u2018Doc Fix\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So hinted Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who told a crowd gathered this week for an annual meeting of the American Hospital Association that the House might soon introduce such a bill, CQ HealthBeat <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kaiserhealthnews.org\/daily-reports\/2010\/april\/27\/physician-issues.aspx?referrer=search\" >reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The political advantage of that move is clear: The American Medical Association has been screaming from the rafters for Congress to step in and scrap the flawed formula that dictates Medicare payments to doctors &#8212; a formula that would have cut those payments by 21 percent this year without congressional intervention &#8212; only to see lawmakers continually apply short-term fixes instead.<span id=\"more-83461\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The latest Band-Aid came earlier this month, when Congress delayed the scheduled pay cut until June. That&#8217;s better than actually having the cut realized, but it hasn&#8217;t satisfied AMA leaders, who endorsed the Democrats&#8217; health care reform bill with the understanding that Congress would solve the Medicare payment problem once and for all.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If the formula is not repealed, the problem will continue to grow,&#8221; AMA President J. James Rohack said in a statement earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>No word yet on how the Democrats would pay for the five-year fix, or even whether it would satisfy a doctors lobby that wants a permanent solution. But Van Hollen, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, clearly doesn&#8217;t want to step into November&#8217;s mid-term elections without at least the hint of something more long-term than another Band-Aid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So hinted Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who told a crowd gathered this week for an annual meeting of the American Hospital Association that the House might soon introduce such a bill, CQ HealthBeat reports. The political advantage of that move is clear: The American Medical Association has been screaming from the rafters for Congress [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546284","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\/4315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}