Sustainable Growth Rate

Floor Speech

Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people who are 65 or older, certain younger people with disabilities, and people with End-Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or a transplant).

For the past 11 years, the Medicare sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula has impeded stability in the Medicare program for providers and beneficiaries. Congress has to fix the SGR and not continue to do short term fixes every 3 or 6 or 12 months. Physicians should and deserve equitable reimbursement and not a lower reimbursement rate for the services they provide to our seniors. This is one of the leading reasons why physicians are leaving their practice. We should repeal SGR and establish a legislative fix with a minimum five-year period of payment stability for our doctors. This period will allow doctors to develop long-term strategic planning for their practice and time to invest in electronic health information technology and other medical systems to improve access and quality care for their patients.

Now is the time to capitalize on the lower offset now projected for the permanent repeal of the SGR formula otherwise failure to do so may cause problems for many providers to see Medicare patients. Ten thousand new enrollees enter Medicare each day. Access to physicians will suffer for the Medicare population as the gap between payments and practice costs continue to grow.

We needed to pass H.R. 4015 without any poison pill provisions that will attempt to take pot shots to diminish the efficacy of the Affordable Care Act.

Source