Status of SGR Reform: Pending

As Politico recently pointed out, those of us keeping up on health policy have yet another acronym to learn: OCO, which stands for Overseas Contingency Operations. Seemingly unrelated to healthcare, many healthcare advocacy groups, including the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians, are recommending that savings from money allocated to OCO be used to fund a repeal of the nearly 30 percent Medicare reimbursement cuts scheduled under the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula.

For background, the SGR formula puts in place cuts to physician payments when Medicare spending grows beyond certain benchmarks. Year after year, Congress postpones the cuts, instead freezing or increasing payment rates.  In December 2011 the cuts were delayed again, this time until March 1,2012, when the reimbursement cuts and payroll tax increase will go into effect. A bipartisan conference committee has formed to come up with a solution.

Can the conference committee succeed where Congress, President Obama and the 2011 SuperCommitee failed?

As CNN and The New York Times report, the conference committee is not making progress on coming up with any deal, let alone a smart, permanent solution to the clearly dysfunctional SGR formula.  It is more likely that any agreement they reach will just delay cuts once again, putting them off to be dealt with until December when elections are over. This creates a non-stop environment of uncertainty for physicians whose practices need Medicare revenue to survive.