Syracuse (WSYR-TV) - If you're on Medicare, it may soon become more difficult to find a doctor who accepts your coverage. Physicians, already upset over how much the federal government pays them, will be dealt another blow at midnight tonight.
The Senate left on break before settling Medicare reimbursement rates and doctors will have to wait until lawmakers return to Washington in two weeks, to get their claims paid.
Most doctors say they don't make nearly as much money on Medicare patients as they do patients with private insurance, as it is. Lawmakers have been promising to fix the reimbursement formula for years, but so far, they've just extended what's already on the books. This year, they didn't even do that.
So, all claims submitted by doctors between midnight tonight and at least April 12th will not be processed.
Medicare will wait until the Senate goes back into session and votes to either extend the current formula again or allow it to expire which would mean the reimbursement rate will drop by 21%. NewsChannel 9's Jennifer Lewke spoke with several local doctors Wednesday who said a decrease that large would mean they'd have to consider making major cuts in both their own staff and the patients they accept. "You can't just see more patients because if you're losing money on every patient, seeing more of them doesn't help," said Dr. Jef Sneider, an Internist in Syracuse. "So, I might try to get a job at a hospital or something and maybe I'd have to close my practice." Dr. Sneider says 40-50% of his patients are on Medicare. He has stopped accepting any new Medicare patients until this all gets figured out.
Congressman Dan Maffei says the house did approve measures to revamp the reimbursement formula but the senate didn't act on that or another emergency extension. Senator Chuck Schumer says they did try to pass an emergency fix but it was blocked because it was attached to another bill. Either way Schumer says, as soon as he gets back, he will effort a fix that does not decrease reimbursements.
