The fun continues!

The House voted this week to pass an amended defense appropriations bill (H.R. 3326), that temporarily delays the scheduled 21.2% Medicare physician payment cut that was set to occur January 1st. Congress now has until Feb. 28th to come up with a plan to keep these cuts from happening. The bill provides a 0 percent update to the Medicare physician payment formula to allow Congress to establish a new permanent Medicare physician payment system upon returning in the new year. The Senate is poised to approve the defense spending bill in the coming days. Both the House and Senate tried to include a permanent fix in their healthcare reform proposals to the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), which is the reason these Medicare cuts were set to occur in the first place, but due to the fiscal impact of fixing the SGR, neither healthcare reform proposal addresses this issue.

The Senate will begin working on the healthcare reform bill again this weekend and there is still talk that something will be voted on by Christmas. What that “something” is remains to be seen…….
Stay tuned……