A 10 percent reduction in reimbursements for Medicare physicians could be delayed for 18 months, if Democratic Congressman Max Baucus’s plan is successful. (Kaiser Network)
Medicare physicians will see their reimbursements cut by 10 percent beginning July 1, 2008. Under Baucus’s plan, the cut would be delayed until 2010, and reimbursement rates would be raised by 1.1 percent. He also wants to increase and link reimbursements for primary care physicians (PCP) to quality of care.
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent government agency that advises Congress about Medicare issues, believes that a pay increase for PCPs will “bolster the number of PCPs, who receive relatively lower salaries than specialists, causing fewer medical students to choose primary care…”
In other Medicare news, a survey released by the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PMCA) revealed that reducing the time in which Medicare prescription drug reimbursements must be made would limit the ability to detect fraud. From the Kaiser Network:
For the survey, PCMA interviewed dozens of industry experts responsible for pharmacy audits and fraud investigations and found that fraud schemes have become more complicated and more difficult to detect. Experts maintain that waste, fraud and abuse in pharmacy claims accounts for 1% of medication costs, which could translate to hundreds of millions of dollars in unnecessary costs for the Medicare prescription drug benefit, PCMA said.
