MACRA 'DOC FIX' Passed : Another Failure In Congress

What's new? Congress drops the ball again. Instead of making real time, common sense decisions that actually fix the problem, they make a decision that just not only passes the problem onto the next generation, but they have made it worse by not do the job they were elected to do by the people they are serving.

Medicare Access and Reauthorization Act (MACRA) is not in the best interest of the people that passed the congress Doc Fix raising the deficit instead of actually fixing the problem.

This is just one more failure to deliver on the part of congress. They know the Doc Fix that congress has passed is not a good solution and yet they take the easy way out with just politics as usual.

MACRA Is Not Cutting It
Source: John R. Graham, "Fix the Flawed Medicare Doc Fix," National Center for Policy Analysis, April 13, 2015.

April 14, 2015

For over a decade, Congress has struggled with an inadequate formula to calculate Medicare payments to physicians.  The formula results in an amount too low to ensure physicians will continue to see Medicare beneficiaries, says NCPA senior fellow John R. Graham. At least once a year, Congress has to pass a short-term increase to Medicare physician payments to prevent fees dropping about 20 percent.  The current boost expired on March 31, 2015, necessitating a rapid response.
MACRA is a poor doc fix for two major reasons:

• Less than four percent of its spending is offset by cuts to other government spending, resulting in an estimated $141 billion increase in cumulative budget deficits over 10 years, and $500 billion over 20 years.  This is the first time since Congress began to struggle with the physician payment formula that it has abandoned budget neutrality, a commitment made previously by both parties.
• MACRA significantly increases federal control of the practice of medicine, in line with the ambitions of Obamacare.  Doctors will face increasing requirements to comply with federal regulation in order to get paid.  These will likely include greater reliance on government-certified Electronic Health Records, which have already proven to frustrate doctors and do nothing to benefit patient care, despite an investment of $30 billion taxpayer dollars.

Three options are available to reduce the shortcomings of MACRA and keep the door open to effective Medicare reform:

• A two-year doc fix, paralleling the extension of the Children's Health Insurance Plan in MACRA.
• Including MACRA in the pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) scorecards, requiring the president to pay for it with other funds.
• Finding offsets to pay for the $141 billion in MACRA spending that is not yet offset.