Medical Center

Leaders of the American Medical Association and other major societies have maintained that a permanent revision to the SGR formula was an essential part of healthcare reform and that without such a revision they may not continue to back other reform initiatives. In a concerted lobbying effort, 127 national and state medical societies sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) last week urging passage of the bill passed today, H.R. 3961.  “Medicine can no longer support the sort of short-term patches that have been used in the past,” the letter stated. The only 2 state medical societies that were not signatories were the Medical Society of New Jersey and the Alaska State Medical Association. H.R. 3961 would add $210 billion to the federal deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That red ink had galvanized Republican opposition to the bill. House Republicans failed to introduce a substitute SGR bill that would have given physicians a 2% raise from 2010 through 2013. They claimed that their legislation would not add to the federal deficit because it contained cost-saving reforms, most notably in the area of medical liability, that would offset its price tag.

Read more of link