For Immediate Release
July 1, 2008
Contact: Melanie Roussell
(202) 225-3951
WASHINGTON D.C. — Congressman John Conyers, Jr. made the following statement responding to today’s 10.6% rate cut in the Medicare physician payment rate."
"Today's physician reimbursement cuts have shaken the Medicare system to its very core. It boggles the mind to think that, with an aging population and a worsening physician shortage, this Administration and the Congressional Republicans have turned their backs on hard-working physicians who care for millions of Medicare patients across the country. It is my fear that with these cuts, many physicians will opt out of accepting Medicare, and our seniors will be forced to forgo necessary life saving medical care and services."
"I want to reassure Michigan's Medicare doctors and seniors that the Democratic leadership in the Congress will never turn its back on those who care for our parents and grandparents. We will never play politics with health security of those in our society who survived the Great Depression and won two world wars. These members of the Greatest Generation deserve more health care provider choices. Instead, Republicans in the Congress and the White House have only provided more headaches by exacerbating the existing physician shortage.
Similarly, these rate cuts will punish Michigan's Medicare doctors – a group of physicians who regularly make financial sacrifices when they accept Medicare patients. Instead of encouraging our best and brightest doctors to participate in the Medicare program, the Administration is instead encouraging them to turn needy seniors away from their waiting rooms.
Physicians have traditionally been a constituency that has been very amenable to Republican ideas about health care policy. As these rate cuts kick in all across the country today, I think many physicians will gain a new understanding about which party in Congress best understands their needs."
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