Medicare cuts worry docs, seniors

[OhioChick]

Friday, September 29, 2006
By Sarah Kellogg
Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- If Congress doesn't act this fall to stop a planned cut in Medicare payment rates, some U.S. doctors, including those in Michigan, may be forced to stop taking or completely drop some of their elderly and disabled Medicare patients.

That's what the nation's top physician groups told a U.S. House subcommittee Thursday as they encouraged lawmakers to halt the 5.1 percent rate cut slated for Jan. 1 and the reductions planned every year after that through 2015.

"The Medicare physician payment system is broken," said Dr. Cecil Wilson, chairman of the board of the American Medical Association, the nation's largest doctors group. "Physicians face drastic Medicare payment cuts of about 40 percent over the next nine years, while costs increase about 20 percent."

Senior groups are worried, too.

http://www.mlive.com/news/statewide/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1159485011222430.xml&coll=1