Even though the government appeared poised to take a big share out of your next Medicare payments, you can heave a sigh of relief for one more year. For this year, you won't need to worry about losing pay. This is because the 23 percent Medicare pay cuts that practices have feared since last January were once again kicked to the curb by Congress.
You will not face the same nail-biting payment woes this year as you did last year, owing to a Senate Finance Committee bill that'll freeze Medicare pay at present levels for one more year.
The House of Representatives gave a nod to the Medicare and Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010 on December 9 and the Senate voted on it the day before moving it to the President's desk for signature. The bill will rid the 25 percent cut that medical practices were going to face from January 1.
Physicians cheered the news that they will not have to wait for the new Congress and Senate members to take their seats prior to determining whether a payment fix would take place.
Many physicians made clear that last year's roller coaster ride, caused by five delays of this year's cut, forced them to make difficult practice changes like limiting the number of Medicare patients they could tend to.
History: Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (DMont.) and ranking member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) had vowed to take up a full-year fix to the Medicare payment formula they could enact prior to the 25 percent cuts kick in on January 1, according to a November 29 statement on the Senate Finance Committee's Website.
The bill was passed as a bipartisan effort, and the Senate Finance Committee noted that it'll cost $14.9 billion over 10 years to implement the physician pay fix. It'll be funded by making minor adjustments to the Affordable Care Act, the health care legislation that President Obama signed into law in March last year.
For more on this and the latest on the Medicare pay cuts, sign up for a medical coding guide like Supercoder.
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