AAFP Rallies Support for House Budget Resolution

The AAFP has issued a Legislative Alert through its newly launched Connect for Reform (Members Only) campaign to urge members of Congress to support the House version of a recently passed budget resolution.

The House and Senate each have passed budget resolutions (at the THOMAS Web site, type "H. Con. Res. 85" or "S. Con. Res. 13" in the search box after selecting "Bill Number") that lay out spending parameters for the upcoming fiscal year. Both resolutions address the need to support primary care and include reserve funds for health care reform. Only the House version, however, would allow Congress to enact legislation to block physician payment reductions scheduled to take place this year without making cuts to other federal programs or relying on tax increases. The Senate-approved version would require nearly $300 billion in offsetting revenue increases or cost reductions elsewhere in the federal budget.

"The provisions in the House budget make real reform of physician payment much more likely," says the Legislative Alert. "The Senate version does not contain these same provisions."

The alert urges AAFP members to call their members of Congress to tell them to support the House budget committee's provisions to improve physician payment. "Physician payment hangs in the balance," it warns.

The alert contains a list of 10 talking points to put the issue of physician payment reform into proper perspective and to help AAFP members convey their message to legislators. "For the last six years, the statutory formula used to determine how Medicare will pay physicians and other health care providers has produced steep reductions in payment rates," says the document. "To prevent these reductions, Congress has every year postponed the scheduled payment rate but has allowed these reductions to accumulate."

If Congress does not act this year, Medicare would have to pay physicians 21 percent less, notes the document. "Before Congress can address long-term payment reforms, it must address this debt.

"Clearly, the provisions in the House budget resolution make it much more feasible to turn to real reform of the physician payment formula."

This year, unlike past years, the House and Senate budget resolutions and the president's 2010 budget proposal all address the need to adequately support primary care. The House budget resolution, for example, calls for improving payment accuracy to encourage efficient use of resources while ensuring primary care receives appropriate compensation. The Senate budget resolution calls for "measures to encourage physicians to train in primary care residencies and (to) ensure an adequate supply of residents and physicians."

This language is partly a result of the work done by the AAFP and other primary care organizations, says Kevin Burke, director of the AAFP's Division of Government Relations.

As Congress and the Obama administration debate health care reform, there is a growing recognition that primary care is a key component of any health care reform effort and that it must be strengthened, Burke notes. He cautions, however, that the congressional budget resolutions and the president's budget are simply words that do not have any real impact on policy. "It is not a done deal yet."