Taking the urgent effort to fix Medicare physician payment straight to federal lawmakers’ doorsteps in Washington, D.C., the Texas Medical Association, American Medical Association, and dozens of state and national medical organizations have rallied Congress to pass a new resolution that would cancel the latest cut and provide some extenuating, if temporary, relief.
House Resolution 879, led by physician lawmakers and a bipartisan group of sponsors, would, effective April 1 through Dec. 31, stop the 2.83% cut physicians received on Jan. 1. and replace it with a 2% payment increase to counter the rising costs of running a practice.
Through a multipronged advocacy push, medicine is urging Congress to pass the measure as part of a budget package expected to come up for a vote in mid-March to avoid a government shutdown.
Although the proposed legislation, the Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act, provides a needed “Band-Aid” to reduce stress on physician practices, “It’s very disappointing that we still have to come up with fixes on something that should have been fixed many years ago,” said TMA President G. Ray Callas, MD, who recently visited with Texas and other federal lawmakers on Medicare reform as part of the American Medical Association’s National Advocacy Conference in Washington, D.C.
“We can’t continue to die by multiple different cuts. We’ve got to completely fix and overhaul the Medicare payment system to allow practice viability and especially allow private practices to stay viable,” he told Texas Medicine Today.
That message also was reiterated in a letter in which AMA, TMA, and more than 100 state and national medical societies urged congressional leaders: “The time for legislative action is now. America’s physicians and the millions of patients we treat can no longer accept any excuses, such as an overcrowded legislative calendar, competing policy priorities, or an inability to achieve bipartisan consensus, as reasons for not including provisions that reverse the latest round of cuts and provide a crucial payment update in next appropriations package.”
The 2025 cut adds to what AMA research calculates as a 33% reduction of Medicare physician payment when adjusted for inflation from 2001.
“Expecting physicians to provide the same level of care to America’s seniors despite being underpaid by over 30 percent and witnessing exponential growth in the cost of providing medical services is simply unsustainable,” the Feb. 10 letter said. “This cycle threatens to undermine the overarching stability of the Medicare program,” and “directly threatens patient access to timely, high-quality care, particularly in underserved areas.”
Act now: Reach out to your legislator directly to urge support for HR 879 with TMA’s ready-made action alert.
Last Updated On
February 18, 2025
Originally Published On
February 14, 2025
Phil West
Associate Editor
(512) 370-1394
phil.west[at]texmed[dot]org
Phil West is a writer and editor whose publications include the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Austin American-Statesman, and San Antonio Express-News. He earned a BA in journalism from the University of Washington and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin’s James A. Michener Center for Writers. He lives in Austin with his wife, children, and a trio of free-spirited dogs.