PatientAction

What does Medicare physician payment have to do with whether you can get an appointment with your doctor? More than most patients realize. The cost of running a medical practice keeps rising, and when Medicare payments fail to keep pace, independent practices can face increasingly difficult decisions about whether they can continue serving Medicare patients or remain open at all. That is why Patients Rising is supporting the Patients First Act, H.R. 9693, which would change how Medicare physician payments are calculated and provide more predictable annual updates tied to the cost of delivering care. Because for patients, this is not just a payment formula. It can mean whether your doctor’s door is still open when you need it. Ask your representative to support H.R. 9693, the Patients First Act.

Getting an appointment shouldn’t depend on whether your doctor can afford to keep the doors open. Yet across the country, patients are waiting longer, traveling farther and watching independent practices disappear from their communities. Medicare physician payment, adjusted for practice-cost inflation, has fallen 33% over the past 25 years. For patients, that erosion can eventually show up as fewer doctors, fewer appointments and fewer options close to home. The Patients First Act (H.R. 9693) takes aim at the payment policies contributing to that problem, including annual reimbursement updates and Medicare’s budget-neutrality rules. Patients Rising is supporting the legislation and bringing the patient voice into a debate that can determine whether care remains accessible in the communities that need it. Read why we’re fighting to keep the doctor’s door open: hubs.ly/Q04z6ptt0

The debate over Medicare reimbursement can sound like an argument over payment formulas until you consider what those numbers mean for the patients trying to get an appointment. Patients Rising Chief Mission Officer Terry Wilcox takes that argument to the pages of The Wall Street Journal, where her letter examines the growing divide between what Medicare pays physicians and what it costs to deliver care. Medicare physician payments have fallen 33% over the past 25 years when adjusted for practice-cost inflation. Terry argues that years of underpayment are reshaping where physicians can afford to practice and ultimately how readily Medicare beneficiaries can access care. Her letter also raises a larger question for Congress as calls for Medicare for All continue: How can we promise to expand a system that is already struggling to adequately pay the physicians caring for the people enrolled in it? Read Terry’s letter in The Wall Street Journal: hubs.ly/Q04xpkv20