Assessing Impact of Medicare Cuts

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, it is rare in this Chamber, especially recently, that you find a bipartisan effort, especially one that is all about the people. In this case, it is about the people.

You have seen several physicians and several people from different committees from all over the Nation agree on one thing: We are not doing the right thing.

By cutting Medicare payments to individual practitioners, we have done the opposite of the right thing. We will consolidate healthcare. You lose the cheapest way to deliver healthcare to the most people.

Right now, hospital systems employ 71 percent of all physicians, and that is going up every year.

Physicians deliver healthcare at the lowest possible rate. That is a fact. By doing the Medicaid payment cuts just to physicians, not to hospital systems, just to physicians at this quantity, you are forcing more physicians to work for hospitals, which means less competition and higher prices. That is the end-all be-all to what is going to happen right now.

It is not going to save more money. It is going to mean more consolidations, more monopolistic practices, higher prices, and worse access, because physicians simply won't be out there to accept you as patients.

You will have people retire; you will have people go out of business. When those physicians aren't there to take care of you at the most rudimentary level, the best and more affordable level, you will have nothing but worse patient care and a worse environment for physicians.

Therefore, I do recommend, just like my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, to do the right thing. If people in Congress on both sides of the aisle are demanding to do the right thing, why can't we make it happen?

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of us to stand with our fellow physicians in a bipartisan effort to pass legislation to prevent cuts to the Medicare payments to physicians.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source