Policy Solutions to the Border Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARTER of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for hosting this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss CMS' Medicare physician fee schedule which threatens seniors' access to healthcare, exacerbates vertical consolidation within the market, and will further drive patients toward higher cost sites of service.

Physician costs are growing, but their reimbursements are shrinking yet again.

In America, we all want the same thing when it comes to healthcare. Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or whatever, you want accessible, affordable, and quality healthcare. Everyone wants that.

This is causing all three to suffer. Accessibility is decreasing. More physicians and more physicians are no longer accepting Medicaid and are no longer accepting Medicare.

The issues are accessibility, affordability, driving patients to higher cost sites, and, of course, quality.

Quality goes down when we lose quality physicians, and we are losing them. They are getting out of the practices because they can't afford to stay in the practices. In fact, Medicare doctor payments have been cut by almost 10 percent over the last 4 years. This is simply unsustainable.

Fortunately, we have a window of opportunity to right this wrong and support the thousands of hardworking men and women serving millions of Medicare beneficiaries. Over the holidays, I spoke with doctors in my district who are preparing to make painful decisions including service reductions and hiring freezes.

For patients, this means an inability to get even basic healthcare services close to their homes or longer wait times as overwhelmed staff race to keep up.

That is why I am working closely with my bipartisan colleagues on a permanent solution, but we need to stop the full 3.37 percent cut and ensure that physicians have the financial support necessary to care for our seniors.

This is the United States of America. We have the greatest healthcare system in the world, and we are ruining it.

Again, I don't care if you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent, red, blue, or green. I don't care. We all want the same thing. We want accessible, affordable, quality healthcare. This is ruining it. We have got to compensate our physicians.

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