Doctors In New York State Upset With Congress

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Wants Congress to re-think what it is doing

 In response to Congress' failure to prevent a 21% Medicare cut in physician reimbursement, which will, therefore, go into effect March 1, David Hannan, MD, President of the Medical Society of the State of New York (MSSNY), made the following comments:

"It is an outrage that Congress has put New Yorkers' access to health care in jeopardy by failing to take action to prevent an unsustainably severe 21% Medicare physician reimbursement cut. Regardless of which party or which individual Senators are to blame for the failure to enact legislation to prevent the cut from going into effect, the bottom line is that this draconian reduction will go into effect on Monday. At a time when physicians face so many other hurdles in their effort to keep a viable practice, including extraordinarily high medical liability insurance costs, ongoing difficulty in being reimbursed fairly by health insurance companies and the other significant costs in running a small business in New York State, many physician practices will simply be unable to sustain this cut, and this will seriously jeopardize access to needed care for many, many patients.

We call upon Congress to roll up its sleeves and take action immediately upon returning to Washington on Monday to assure that seniors access to care is not interrupted and that physicians are fairly paid for treating Medicare patients."