Revised and updated: July 27, 2009 On July 16, the American Medical Association (AMA) voiced its support for H.R. 3200, the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. Letters of support from the American College of Surgeons, the American Academy of Family Practitioners, the…

Under existing congressional formulas, Medicare payment rates for the services that physicians provide to Medicare beneficiaries will be reduced by 10 percent in July of this year. Instead of reforming this broken payment system, Congress will doubtless resort to another short-term fix, repeating the annual congressional fire drill to make sure that its own Medicare…

Congress is about to undergo its annual, eleventh-hour ritual of reconsidering its own statutory requirement to cut Medicare physician payments. Under current law, deep cuts are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2008. This ritual is the result of Congress's refusal to reform the physician payment system and, more importantly, Medicare itself. For the…

Continuing its effort to override President Bush's veto, Congress wants to expand income eligibility for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) into the middle class, even though the program was designed to provide health coverage to low-income children. That approach would end existing private health insurance coverage for millions of children--more so as eligibility is…

In spite of Medicaid's growing pressure on state budgets, some governors and state lawmakers want to expand its coverage. They seek to increase eligibility for the program up the income scale and enroll larger numbers of uninsured working families. Aside from the daunting fiscal issues, as a clinical matter, this would be an ideologically driven…

When Medicare was enacted in 1965, Congress statutorily prohibited government interference in the practice of medicine. That prohibition has largely been ignored in practice, and today Medicare doctors endure a complex and cumbersome administrative pricing system for the more than 7,000 physician services that beneficiaries receive.[1] This system fails to reduce costs,…