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Are you willing to accept the 10.5-percent Medicare payment cuts scheduled for June 30, or do you want to fight for a long-term plan to replace the Sustainable Growth Rate formula with a funding scheme that keeps pace with the cost of providing care? If it's the latter, then join your peers in TMA's effort to restore sanity to the Medicare payment system.
As U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, MD (R-Lewisville), put it at last month's TEXPAC Grassroots Forum: "We can’t leave these decisions up to Congress. Health care begins and ends with doctors, and without doctors, it doesn’t happen. This requires all hands on deck. We can’t sit back and let someone else do something for us."
TMA has developed the "Texas Medicare Manifesto" so Congress and the public will know exactly what physicians want and why. You can read all about it in a commentary by TMA President William W. Hinchey, MD, in the February Texas Medicine.
What can you do? Let Congress know the SGR has to go. Let Congress know it needs to develop a rational Medicare physician payment system that automatically keeps up with the cost of running a practice and is backed by a stable funding source. To help make your voice heard, TMA has created a sample letter to the editor to send to your local newspaper and flyers in English and Spanish you can post in your waiting room. The flyers warn patients what might happen if nothing is done, and urge them to contact Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison and their local representative to demand action.
How does the new 2008 Medicare physician fee schedule affect your practice? You can find out on the TMA Web site.
Last Published: 1/30/2008 Print this page
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