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Bush to approve Medicare physician rate increases if funding available

Ambulatory Surgery Reimbursement Update, November 22, 2005

The administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said the Bush administration would support increasing Medicare physician payments over the next two years if Congress can find the funding to do so, according to the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report citing CQ HealthBeat.

The announcement potentially reverses the fate of Medicare physicians, whose payments were scheduled to be cut by about 26% over the next six years, according to the American Medical Association (AMA).

The AMA says that 38% of physicians would stop taking new Medicare patients if the first payment cut in 2006 went ahead as scheduled.

The proposed increases could cost as much as $20 billion. The most likely areas to see cuts to allow for the physician payment increase are hospitals and home health agency payments, according to CQ HealthBeat.

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