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Senior Journal.com
Leading Medical
Groups Urge Congress to Stop Steep Medicaid Cuts
Doctors treating Medicaid patients face big pay cut in 2015, way below
pay for treating Medicare patients
Oct. 27, 2014 - Doctors representing four major physician organizations
are knocking on doors in Washington today to try and preserve the
current law of payment parity for primary care and immunization
services under Medicaid for at least two years. The law, set to expire
at the end of this year, mandates that doctors treating Medicaid
patients – the poorest patients – be paid the same as what is paid
doctors treating Medicare patients with the same procedure.
If this pay parity is not extended, the nation’s primary care
physicians say they will face an average pay cut of 41 cents on the
dollar for providing primary care services, such as office visits for
the treatment of chronic diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes
to the more than 65 million Americans enrolled in Medicaid.
Collectively representing nearly 423,000 physicians, the American
Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Family Physicians
(AAFP), American College of Physicians (ACP) and American Osteopathic
Association (AOA) representatives are meeting with dozens of
congressional offices on Capitol Hill today, with hundreds more
meetings taking place as part of a daylong AAP advocacy training.
As a national average, physicians treating Medicaid patients have been
historically paid 59 percent of what is paid by Medicare for the same
primary care service. This payment disparity can force pediatricians,
family physicians and internal medicine doctors to limit the number of
new Medicaid patients they can afford to take on, creating barriers for
children and families in search of access to medical care.
This access barrier is especially problematic, according to the medical
groups, because Medicaid serves low-income families as well as children
and adults with special health care needs; access to health insurance
is especially important for these vulnerable populations.
Current law increases Medicaid payments for primary care and
immunizations services to Medicare levels for calendar years 2013 and
2014, but funding for this policy expires on Jan. 1, 2015.
Leaders from the AAP, AAFP, ACP and AOA are in Washington today to urge
support for a bill sponsored by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and
Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Ensuring Access to Primary Care for Women
& Children Act (S. 2694), which would extend Medicaid-Medicare
payment parity for two more years.
“Since children make up nearly half of all Medicaid patients,
increasing Medicaid payments for primary care services helps improve
access to care for children,” said AAP President James M. Perrin, MD,
FAAP.
“The improved Medicaid payment rates over the last two years have
already helped pediatricians better address the needs of children in
their communities by providing the resources and support they need to
give the best possible care to their patients. In order to sustain
improved access to care for children in Medicaid, the parity payments
must be extended.”
For the rest of this article, and more senior news, go to Senior Journal.com
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