If this 2.8% cut is implemented on January 1, 2025, it will mark the fifth consecutive year of reductions in Medicare physician payments – continuing an untenable course when emergency departments across the country are already struggling under the severe strain of the patient boarding crisis, near or even past the breaking point with EDs overflowing and patients waiting for follow-up care even after they’ve been seen and stabilized.

Background
For decades, Medicare physician reimbursements have failed to keep up with inflation, despite other Medicare participants receiving annual inflationary updates. While Congress has stepped in to mitigate the full impact of the cuts over the last several years, the cumulative impact of the cuts only serves to threaten the ability of emergency physicians and other health care providers to sustain access to lifesaving emergency care for our patients.

Rather than face a yearly scramble to address steep payment cuts, we are urging Congress to work with us and other stakeholders to swiftly identify policy solutions that will provide long-term stability for Medicare beneficiaries and the physicians who manage and provide their health care.

How You Can Help
Recently, Representatives Greg Murphy, MD (R-NC), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Marianette Miller-Meeks, MD (R-IA), Ami Bera, MD (D-CA), Larry Bucshon, MD (R-IN), Raul Ruiz, MD (D-CA), John Joyce, MD (R-PA), and Kim Schrier, MD (D-WA), introduced the bipartisan Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act. This critical bipartisan legislation will stop the impending 2.8% cut and, importantly, provide an additional 1.8% update in 2025 to help reflect inflationary pressures also affecting emergency physicians.

Ask your U.S. Representative to sponsor the Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act to stop the cuts and provide an additional update to reflect inflationary pressures in order to preserve access to the health care safety net that our patients need and deserve.