AMA says Medicare payment reform is critical

Renewed urgency around balance billing comes amid increasing frustrationwith efforts to reform the Medicare payment formula—especially thecomponent that requires Medicare to remain budget neutral. 

With health system reform looming as a central issue in the 2008presidential race, members of the AMA House of Delegates focused on strategiesto advance the AMA’s own proposals. Medicare reform, state health care reform initiatives, the AMA’slongstanding opposition to a “single-payer” system of health care,and pending legislation to reauthorize the State Children’s Health InsuranceProgram dominated debate at last month’s interim meeting of the AMA House ofDelegates in Honolulu (see also Physicians Face Drastic Cut in 2008 MedicarePayment). Indicative of the urgency felt by delegates surrounding health care reformefforts was a resolution that would have had the AMA sponsor a forum on healthcare reform for all the major presidential candidates at the AMA’s annualmeeting in June 2008.

Source/more:  Psychiatric News, http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/24/4?etoc