Physicians Step Up Protests Against Medicare Cuts

The Congressional Budget Office has offered some alternatives to the SGR. One is freezing payment rates at their 2009 levels for the next 10 years. Another would provide annual adjustments alongside the Medicare Economic Index (MEI). The MEI measures the annual increase in the cost of medical practices. The AMA believes that payments should be based on the MEI, and not the SGR.

Robert Moffit, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Center for Health Policy Studies, says the whole SGR imbroglio has resulted in "political damage" to the AMA and other groups because of their endorsement of a Senate healthcare reform bill without assurances that the "doc fix" would take place.

"You can't have it both ways? a deficit neutral Senate bill and the doc fix," Moffit says. "I think [the AMA] did it because doctors are desperate and locked into a system which has been created by Congress."

"The system has nothing to do with the conditions of supply and demand and interactions between doctors and patients in the delivery of medical services. It's crazy, but that's the way it is," Moffit says. "We have one set of bizarre formulas on top of another set of bizarre formulas. Congress is playing the role of the mad scientist making sure the Frankenstein monster doesn't get out. I think we ought to kill the monster."