SGR

Fixing Medicare physician payments

lborkowski | April 20, 2015

Last week, President Obama signed long-awaited legislation that will put an end to periodic panic at the prospect of massive, sudden cuts to Medicare physician payments. The bipartisan “doc fix” bill repeals the Sustainable Growth Rate formula that aimed, but failed, to control growth in Medicare physician payments (Medicare Part B). When it was first adopted in 1997, the SGR probably seemed like a good idea for controlling spending growth. When total Medicare Part B payments exceeded the targeted amounts, the SGR mechanism was supposed to automatically reduce physician payment rates. But…