In yet another good news/bad news scenario, lawmakers once again postponed a 23 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursements to doctors – but only for one month.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee's senior Republican, announced on Thursday an agreement to put off the pay cut related to the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) from December 1 to Jan. 1, 2011. The Senate approved the measure by voice vote on Thursday; the measure has yet to be voted on by the House, which is in recess for the Thanksgiving holiday.
"It is my intention to schedule this bill for consideration when the House reconvenes on November 29, so we can send it to the President's desk prior to the November 30 expiration date of current SGR relief," said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the House majority leader, in a statement.
The two lawmakers said the one-month postponement will give lawmakers additional time to come up with a more permanent fix. They said they are working on a one-year solution that they hope to have approved by the end of the year.
"We have set a path to ensure seniors and military families can continue to get quality healthcare," the two said in a joint statement issued Friday.
The fee cuts were developed in 1997 and designed to be phased in through the years to control Medicare spending. Lawmakers have repeatedly deferred the cuts, – causing the impending reduction to increase each year.
Baucus and Grassley said the one-month reprieve – in a bill called the "Physician Payment and Therapy Relief Act of 2010" – would cost $1 billion over 10 years, which will be offset by cuts in Medicare payments to providers of outpatient therapy services in which multiple therapy services are provided to patients in one day. Some relief is included in that bill for therapists, Baucus and Grassley said, by cutting that reduction from 25 percent to 20 percent.
AARP Senior Vice President David Sloane praised the Senate's action.
"Tonight's vote will help to extend the immediate deadline and give lawmakers time to adopt the yearlong extension that seniors and doctors need," he told the Associated Press.
Lawmakers say a permanent solution would cost roughly $300 billion over 10 years in other spending cuts or an addition to the federal deficit.