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Senate passes bill to repeal SGR
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By a vote of 92 to 8, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed a bipartisan bill that repeals the SGR, a key factor in annual Medicare physician payment updates, and replaces it with a merit-based payment system.
The bill also preserves and extends the Children’s Health Care Program.
The House passed a similar measure on March 26, by a vote of 392 to 37.
The Senate passed the bill without amendments. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the measure into law.
If no action had been taken, Medicare providers would have faced a 21% reduction in physician payments stemming from the SGR.
The bill, introduced in the House and Senate on March 19, ensures a 0.5% annual physician payment update through 2019. The new payment structure takes effect in 2019.
The SGR, implemented in 1997 to control physician spending, tied physician payment updates to the relationship between overall fee schedule spending and growth in the gross domestic product.
Since 2003, Congress enacted a series of 17 short-term patches totaling almost $170 billion to forestall significant cuts in Medicare reimbursement partly stemming from the SGR.
The Merit-Based Incentive Payment System consolidates the three current Medicare incentive programs: Physician Quality Reporting System, Value-Based Modifier and Meaningful Use of electronic health records. – by Matt Hasson