Legislation Filed in US Senate to Prevent Physician Cuts

American Medical News reports that legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Senate to continue a 0.5 percent Medicare pay increase through the latter half of 2008 and institute a 1.8 percent update for 2009. According to information from Congressional Daily, the chair of the Senate finance committee stated that there is support for bypassing committee review and sending a bill to fix Medicare directly to the Senate floor. Currently, physicians are slated to receive a 10.6 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursement starting July 1 and an additional cut of about 5 percent in 2009.