President Barack Obama has signed a measure that will postpone a 21.2 percent Medicare physician pay cut until March 1, 2010.
The measure was part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, passed last week by Congress.
The measure comes in the 11th hour, as physicians were expected to take the pay cut on Jan. 1, 2010. Congress has been working to add a permanent fix to healthcare reform bills or pass a free-standing bill to change how physicians are paid under Medicare.
One such fix is the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 3961), passed by the House this fall, which would repeal and replace the current Medicare physician payment formula, or the sustainable growth rate.
In October, the Senate voted against a bill introduced by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) that would have frozen physician payments where they stand for 10 years. The bill would have cost a quarter of a billion dollars.
J. James Rohack, MD, president of the American Medical Association, said it's critical that Congress fix the broken Medicare physician payment formula "once and for all."