Commentary: Time to fix outdated Medicare reimbursement system
Medicare reimbursements to doctors who care for seniors have not kept up with inflation, by a long shot—and Congress needs to do something about it, according to a commentary co-authored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Arianne Shadi Kourosh.
In the Dec. 4 commentary in U.S. News & World Report, Kourosh, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health, and co-authors Ami Bera and Larry Bucshon—both members of Congress as well as doctors—wrote that government payments to physicians who accept Medicare have been cut year after year and no adjustments for inflation have been made for more than two decades, while the U.S. population aged 65 and older has grown almost five times faster than the total population. The result has been that some clinics and physician practices have closed due to insufficient payments, leading seniors to seek costly emergency room care. These increased emergency room visits add billions in costs to the nation’s health system each year.
The co-authors noted that Bera and Bucshon are co-sponsoring legislation that would adjust the Medicare system to account for inflation. “Congress must act now and adjust the formula to stabilize the Medicare payment system permanently,” they wrote.
Read the U.S. News & World Report commentary: Medicare is Breaking. Senior Citizens are Paying the Price.
