November 2000 • Volume 6 Number 11
Halt 2000 proposal appears dead; pain relief bill still pending
Congress had not yet adjourned for the year at press time, but the Academy and other office-based groups appeared to have succeeded in protecting resource-based practice expenses.
However, it was still possible the Pain Relief Promotion Act, which the AAFP has fought, might become law.
Halt 2000 -- RBPE. Hospital-based specialists have asked Congress for a partial halt in the 1998-2002 transition to resource-based practice expenses, a factor in the Medicare fee schedule.
The halt would have frozen at year 2000 levels the cuts in practice expense payments for hospital-based specialties. The AAFP and other office-based groups argued that the highly technical specialties had been unfairly favored when practice expenses were repaid according to historical charges.
Seeing the logic in the office-based groups' viewpoint, Congress -- at press time -- was not even considering halting the carefully planned RBPE transition.
Pain relief bill. "We urge you to actively oppose the Pain Relief Promotion Act and to veto it in any legislative vehicle to which it may be attached," said AAFP Board Chair Bruce Bagley, M.D., of Albany, N.Y., writing to President Bill Clinton Oct. 31.
The bill aimed to stop assisted suicide. The Academy opposes assisted suicide but still lobbied aggressively against the PRPA. Why? Because the PRPA would have amended the Controlled Substances Act and called for training Drug Enforcement Administration agents to investigate physicians' prescribing practices for the terminally ill. The bill could have put physicians at risk for civil and criminal penalties for prescribing needed pain medicine for dying patients, the AAFP contended.
At press time, with Washington in gridlock, there were questions about whether the Senate would pass an omnibus bill with the PRPA attached and about whether the omnibus bill would be signed into law or, if vetoed, overridden by Congress.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2000 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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