Scheduled Medicare Cuts, Pending Funding Shortfalls, Demand Urgent Chiropractic Response

The federal Medicare program, facing looming financial crisis, has sought to delay for a brief period the collapse that most objective analysts say is inevitable by cutting payment to certain providers, including doctors of chiropractic. Using complex formulas known as the Sustainable Growth Rate Formula (SGR) a nd the relative value units (RVUs), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing to enact severe cuts in program reimbursements to chiropractors, approximately 5% under the SGR, which combined with the RVU formula reduction, represents an approximate 13% cut for chiropractic services effective January 1, 2007.

Aware of the negative impact these fee reductions are certain to have on consumers and providers alike, Congress has acted in previous years to delay similar proposed cuts. On July 24, 2006, Rep. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut and Rep. Benjamin Cardin of Maryland began circulating a letter calling on the congressional leadership to act to postpone these proposed Medicare cuts. Click here for the full text of the Johnson/Cardin letter.

ICA is urging all doctors of chiropractic and chiropractic organizations in the United States to contact their federal legislators and call for a postponement of the scheduled Medicare fee reductions, and co-sign the letter prepared by Rep. Johnson and Rep. Cardin. ICA believes this move is of vital importance to the public health and the financial stability of the Medicare program because:

Postponing the scheduled cuts will help to preserve Medicare patients' access to urgently needed care.
Chiropractic offers a highly cost effective, drugless approach to caring for the nation's aging population, at a time when drug costs and the costs of adverse effects and misuse of prescription drugs are bankrupting the entire Medicare program.
Denying reasonable support for chiropractic services will only drive Medicare beneficiaries onto more costly, less effective specialist medical care.
Medicare should be encouraging, not discouraging chiropractic participation as providers, since massive and growing numbers of doctor level providers are declining to take Medicare patients, setting a collision course with disaster when there are simply not enough providers to meet even the basic needs of beneficiaries. The July 24 th Johnson/Cardin Congressional letter states: “The Congressionally-created Council on Graduate Medical Education is predicting a shortage of 85,000 physicians by 2020.”

Beyond the immediate challenge of preserving reasonable financial support for chiropractic services in Medicare, Congress must act to stave off the impending collapse of the financial foundations of the program predicted by every objective and responsible observer. On March 2, 2005, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, in official testimony, told the Budget Committee of the US House of Representatives:

“The Financial Report of the U.S. Government for fiscal 2004, released just before Christmas, says the unfunded liability of the Social Security system is $12.5 trillion, an increase of $810 billion over the previous year. However, the Medicare deficit is twice that: $24.6 trillion, a rise of $9.6 trillion from 2003… Indeed, not only are we not talking about reining in Medicare's exploding costs, we are preparing to make them much worse. Next year, the new Medicare drug benefit is fully effective, which will drive up Medicare spending sharply. This is the reason for the rise in its unfunded liabilities. Medicare's trustees estimate the long-term cost of the drug benefit at $8.1 trillion, accounting for the bulk of its increased liabilities last year.”

ICA also calls on Members of Congress to acknowledge the dangerous implications of the swelling national debt. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis ' Daily Policy Digest , September 19, 2006,

“At the end of the first quarter, the total federal debt, including government agencies and government-sponsored enterprises, stood at $10.2 trillion. But if you also include the estimated unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other programs, the total federal debt is at least $54 trillion, based on three separate studies -- by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) and the Brookings Institution.”

“This is time for plain speaking and blunt communications with our Congressional representatives on behalf of our patients, our profession and our nation,“ said ICA Legislative Committee Co-Chairman Dr. Michael McLean. “We need to stress that chiropractic, as a drugless, clinically sound and cost-effective approach to health and healing, can contribute significantly to the solution of Medicare's problem, but only if beneficiaries are not driven away from our care to second-choice, much more expensive medical specialty care, by unsound public policies.”

ICA urges you to act today! Contact your US Senators and US House Member to urge swift action to postpone the chiropractic fee reductions and to act to provide for a more responsible role for chiropractic in Medicare, to take advantage of the unique contributions only chiropractic can make to the health of that embattled program, and to the health of our senior citizen population. Chiropractic is part of a sound solution, not part of the current problem!

FIND AND CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND US SENATORS:

To assist in identifying your US House of Representatives Member, please go to the link shown below. This is the official site of the US House and they have a Member finder feature that allows you to enter in your zip code, and the name of your House Member will appear. House seats are apportioned according to population and thus the larger states have more Members.

http://www.house.gov/

To find your United States Senators, simply go to the site below and enter your state. Each state, regardless of size, has two Senators. Their office contact information can be obtained simply by clicking on the links that appear from your state information.

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

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*Copyright © 2005, International Chiropractors Association ( ICA ) all rights reserved. All or part of this message may be retransmitted for information purposes, but may not be used for any communal purpose, posted on a website, or used in any non-ICA publication (other than that of an ICA affiliate) without the permission of the ICA.