Wall Street Journal Says Democrats Conducting a ‘War’ on Specialists

Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration are waging a “war” on specialists through health reform legislation and Medicare policy, according to an opinion piece in theWall Street Journal.

For example, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’s health reform bill asks for a review of RVUs, used in Medicare’s CPT coding system, to determine which RVUs have seen “the fastest growth” or have “experienced substantial changes in practice expenses,” with the goal of cutting reimbursements for them.

And in next year’s Medicare fee schedule, CMS is proposing increases of 6-8 percent in reimbursements for primary care physicians, which, in a zero-sum Medicare budget, would mean a concomitant decrease in reimbursements for specialists.

“All Americans might take a different view of healthcare ‘reform’ if they understood that it means snuffing out the best medicine,” the piece concludes.

Read the Wall Street Journal opinion piece on healthcare specialists.

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