Reforming Medicare's Physician Payment System

This past July, after intense lobbying from physician groups, Congress once again stepped in to prevent physicians who provide care to Medicare patients from seeing a 4.5% reduction in their fees.1 Congress appropriately feared the potential problems with access to care that could result from such a fee reduction. But although putting more money into the same broken physician-reimbursement system may buy lawmakers a little more time to address the need for a new one — helpful only if they use it to set the direction for a new system — it also makes the eventual solution even more expensive, . . .