Recommendations on how to further reduce the federal deficit are due to the budget “Super Committee” on Oct. 14. With a budget package this big, Congress is going to have to make some difficult choices. For this reason, it’s critical that House and Senate leaders hear from us over the next two weeks about our priorities.
The College’s goals are three-fold:
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Permanently repeal the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula as part of any deficit reduction plan
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Include medical liability reforms in any deficit reduction plan
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Protect medical imaging from any further cuts
When it comes to the SGR, time constraints and the diminishing pool of spending offsets makes the Super Committee the only viable vehicle for addressing the flawed formulas this year. For every year that Congress postpones fixing the SGR, the cost grows. The American Medical Association (AMA) estimates that by 2016 the cost of permanent repeal would be $600 billion – a significant increase from the roughly $50 billion it would have cost in 2005. If we’re talking about reducing costs, then the SGR should be on the table.
On a similar note, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that medical liability reform would result in cost savings to the federal budget of more than $50 billion over the next 10 years. Including provisions in any deficit reduction plan could help curb these costs. If you attended the Legislative Conference a few weeks ago, you heard from ACC staff and leaders about the need for a system that increases patient safety, compensates injured patients quickly and fairly, improves provider-patient communications, and ensures affordable and accessible medical liability insurance. It’s also important that federal reform efforts do not impact reforms already enacted and working at the state level.
Protecting medical imaging from additional cuts is also crucial. Imaging has been the focus of numerous drastic cuts over the past five years and continues to remain a target by Congress and regulators for potential payment reductions. Additional payment cuts and restrictions on imaging services cannot be absorbed by physician practices without impacting quality and access to high quality care. We cannot stress this enough to our members of Congress.
While at the end of the day we might not like all of the recommendations made by the Super Committee, now is our chance to stand together and at the very least educate members of Congress about the long-term ramifications if our requests are ignored. For those who think this is futile, I’ll leave you with an email that a fellow ACC governor just forwarded; he had received it from his congressman's legislative director. The governor had met with the congressional staff during the Legislative Conference. He received the email as he was about to respond to an ACC alert asking for help in generating support for a sign-on letter to repeal the SGR in the House. The email he received said: “Since we were just talking about the SGR, I wanted to let you know that my boss agreed to sign on to the letter below to the Super committee asking that they include a permanent solution to the SGR.” In the letter, the congressman stated the following important facts: "We are presented with an important choice: continue to distort the picture of our nation’s fiscal status with another short-term solution or restore fiscal transparency to the Medicare program by eliminating the $300 billion debt that has accumulated as a result of the SGR".
Now that’s what I call Advocacy in action. OK, y'all, let’s hit the phones!
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