Press Releases

Luetkemeyer Votes Against Pelosi's Misleading 'Doc Fix' Bill; Supports True Fix

Washington, DC, November 20, 2009
U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) today voted against the misleadingly named "doc fix" bill backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi because it would add more than $200 billion to the nation's deficit and force Missouri seniors to pay more for critical prescription drugs and other services.
U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) today voted against the misleadingly named  “doc fix” bill backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi because it would  add more than $200 billion to the nation’s deficit and force Missouri seniors to pay more for critical prescription drugs and other services.
 
Before the vote, Luetkemeyer reached out to physicians throughout the 9th District and will continue to work with physicians to find a sustainable solution to this problem. Missouri Sen. Kit Bond and Sen. Claire McCaskill voted against this legislation in the Senate.
“I agree that we need to address this critical issue for our doctors, but the American taxpayers have been telling us that Washington must rein in this out-of-control spending spree. We have to start making the tough choices to correct our nation’s ballooning budget deficit, and this bill by Speaker Pelosi and the liberal majority avoids the tough choices by borrowing and spending,” Luetkemeyer said. “This legislation represents more of the same budget gimmicks Speaker Pelosi and the majority in Washington have used to deceive the American people about the true costs of their agenda, and at a time when our nation is facing record unemployment, Americans trying to make ends meet simply cannot afford to keep funding this reckless binge. I remain committed to finding a fiscally sustainable solution to this issue.”
Under the Democrats’ bill, physicians could see their Medicare rates slashed again in 2011. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that seniors’ Medicare Part B premiums would increase by $50 billion over this period. Through administrative actions, seniors can expect to shoulder tens of billions of dollars in new costs through higher premiums, while at the same time receiving cuts to benefits and services provided through programs such as Medicare Advantage in Pelosi’s government takeover of health care.
Physicians would see a 0.8 percent payment rate increase in 2010 under the bill, and beginning in 2011, the legislation would “replace” the flawed Sustainable Growth Rate formula (SGR) with a similarly flawed Target Growth Rate (TGR). The TGR would separate physician services into two groups: one for primary care, the second for all other services.  Each group would have its own spending target, where the SGR has just one spending target for all physicians. By renaming the SGR the TGR, House Democrats argue they are reforming Medicare physician payments.  But consider this – just like the SGR, the TGR would:
·         Allow physician payment rates to be slashed if government-set spending targets are exceeded (as they have been every year since 2001);
·         Tie spending targets to the Gross Domestic Product.  So physicians would continue to be unfairly punished when the economy slows; and
·         Tie physician reimbursement rates to utilization, continuing to punish providers who focus on delivering high-quality care while rewarding those who focus on volume.
The legislation will increase the deficit by $210 billion.  When the costs of additional federal borrowing are included, the bill would increase the nation’s deficit by more than one-quarter trillion dollars over the next 10 years. 
Luetkemeyer believes that Medicare should reimburse physicians fairly to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries have access to the health care they need, and that is why he supported an alternative to provide a real solution to this problem. The alternative supported by Luetkemeyer, which was denied a vote by the House Democratic Majority, would:
  • Provide physicians with a 2 percent Medicare payment rate increase in each of the next 4 years;
  • Avert the scheduled Medicare physician cuts in a fiscally responsible way by including reforms that would fully offset the cost of the bill. These reforms would:
 
    • Implement comprehensive, meaningful medical liability reform, ending junk lawsuits and costly defensive medicine by protecting doctors from overzealous trial lawyers who are looking to get rich quick (savings of $54 billion);
    • Use existing resources available to the HHS Secretary contained in the “Medicare Improvement Fund,” which is designed to improve physician payments (savings of $22.3 billion);
    • Create an approval process at FDA for biosimilar products with appropriate patent and market protections that continue to encourage innovation, providing Americans with access to affordable biologics and reducing the cost of health insurance (savings of $5.7 billion); and
    • Enact health insurance administrative simplification policies, eliminating inefficiencies that unnecessarily drive up health care costs, by creating greater standardization in health care forms and transactions (savings of $19 billion).
 
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