Twenty surgeon and anesthesiologist groups voiced their concerns with the Senate's healthcare reform bill and threatened to oppose the measure if their concerns were not met in a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., this week.
The surgical organizations, led by the American College of Surgeons, accuse the bill of "failing to permanently fix Medicare's broken payment system and to include any meaningful proven medical liability reforms." They also take issue with a number of specific provisions they say will threaten patient access to quality care:
establishment of an unelected Medicare Commission that could make payment and coverage decisions without congressional approval;
required participation in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, which the groups characterize as "seriously flawed";
bonus payments to primary care physicians at the expense of payment cuts to other physicians, including general surgeons and specialists.
"We will work with the Senate to improve the legislation, but if these shortcomings remain in the final Senate bill, we will have no choice but to urge Senators to vote no," says ACS Board of Regents Chairman A. Brent Eastman, MD, FACS, in a press release.
The ACS has already met with legislators over the past year to discuss ways of reducing costs and increasing access to quality care. For example, the ACS holds up its National Surgical Quality Improvement Program as a model of the type of program that, "if supported by Congress, could save the health care system a minimum of tens of billions of dollars over the next decade."
Irene Tsikitas
