Motion to Instruct Conferees on H.R. 3630, Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Capps motion, which again says that we should move as swiftly as possible to resolve all of these issues.

In support of that, I just want to share with the body a survey that was released by the Connecticut Medical Society a few days ago. It's the largest physician group in the State of Connecticut. It asked what the impact would be if the SGR 27 percent rate cut went into effect. It would be catastrophic: 40 percent of doctors would stop accepting Medicare patients; 10 percent would close their practices; 32 percent would lay off staff. But what was interesting was that 19 percent said they are already refusing to take new appointments of Medicare beneficiaries and are curtailing access for both Medicare and Tricare patients all across the State of Connecticut.

So clearly, this is not an issue which can wait until the last minute. People are already voting with their feet, and it's affecting access to health care literally as we sit here today in the House Chamber.

I also would just like to remind the gentleman from New York that the measure that the Republicans passed in December, which supposedly addressed this issue, paid for the SGR fix by taking $40 billion out of the hospital accounts in Medicare.

Care Act, it abolished the SGR with H.R. 3662. We should follow that path at the end of the day, and we should certainly follow the timeline of the Capps motion.

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