21% Medicare/TRICARE Cut Reversed – For Now

21% Medicare/TRICARE Cut Reversed – For Now

Last week, we urged MOAA members to email their House members to quickly pass legislation approved by the Senate (H.R. 3962) to restore full Medicare/TRICARE payments to doctors through the end of November 2010.

Initially, House leaders planned to delay action on that measure until the Senate passed a broader jobs bill.

After more than 17,000 MOAA members contacted their House members to urge immediate action, House leaders finally brought up and passed the bill Thursday night.

The President is expected to sign it into law immediately.

It will reverse a 21% payment cut that the flawed statutory payment formula had imposed on Medicare as of June 1. Medicare held up processing claims for more than two weeks beyond that date in hopes of quick Hill action, but finally had to implement the reduced payments for claims since June 1 as Congress continued to drag its feet.

Now that the fix is done, Medicare will have to reprocess the affected claims and pay doctors the difference.

TRICARE never got to the point of implementing the 21% cut, as TRICARE payment changes normally trail Medicare’s by 30 to 60 days.

We appreciate Congress taking action to stave off the cuts, but the unfortunate reality is that all this bill did was kick the problem downstream six months until after the election.

Which means Congress will have to act again in the coming months to keep the 21% cut from being reinstated as of December 1.

In the meantime, many thanks are due to the thousands of MOAA members who helped Congress get off the dime – again – on this crucial health care issue.

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