Statement of Rep. Joe Pitts on Congress' Failure to Act on DRA Cuts
"Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 6111, which extends many essential Medicare programs that sustain our seniors every day and keeps them healthy. I applaud provisions in this bill that maintain and preserve access to crucial health care services, like physical therapy, primary care, and dialysis treatments. Our seniors should never have to worry about their access to care. Congress has a responsibility to ensure that our Medicare program is strong and stable enough to provide services without impediments or limitations on access.
"Unfortunately, I believe Congress on this occasion missed an opportunity to ensure unfettered access in an increasingly crucial area of medical practice today: diagnostic imaging. Imaging procedures, like CT scans, MRIs, ultrasound, PET and Xrays save countless lives each day; they identify diseases early on, improving outcomes and lowering costs associated with undiagnosed illness. Seniors rely on brain scans, cardiac diagnostics and other diagnostic and therapeutic technologies every day for disease detection and treatment.
"Access to those services, however, is threatened by provisions in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, DRA, that make drastic cuts to payments for these services that are crucial to identifying life-threatening conditions and guiding diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. The DRA includes payment reductions, inserted at the last minute of Congressional negotiations and without any debate in either body, of between 30 and 50 percent for many of these services performed in doctors' offices and freestanding clinics, seriously endangering the viability of those practices, and thus threatening seniors' access to convenient imaging services outside of the hospital setting.
"This year, I introduced legislation, H.R. 5704, the Access to Medicare Imaging Act of 2006, which would have delayed these cuts for two years while the Government Accountability Office studies the cuts' impact on seniors' access to care. I did so because I was especially concerned that seniors in America's rural areas would face increasingly longer driving distances for testing when some physician clinics stop offering these services, and would inevitably be forced to receive these services in hospitals where longer wait times and higher co-payments might cause many seniors to forego services altogether. In short, I introduced H.R. 5704 because I was concerned about patients--about patients losing their access to life-saving diagnostic services. Evidently, I was not alone. To date, 142 of my colleagues--from both sides of the aisle--in the House have signed on as cosponsors of this critically important legislation.
"Unfortunately, the cuts my bill would have temporarily averted go into effect on January 1, 2007, and I fear that our action here today to protect access to a number of important Medicare services but not to preserve access to diagnostic imaging services is an omission with significant consequences. Without relief from the cuts, many physician practices that provide high quality diagnostic imaging services will shrink in size or shut their doors altogether. Hospitals will overload with patients, and access will suffer. Today's legislation offered a unique opportunity to prevent these consequences by including language to delay the looming cuts until further study of their appropriateness is completed.
"While I regret this missed opportunity, I am hopeful that in the 110th Congress a bipartisan group of my colleagues will, once again, work together to provide open, unfettered access to medically appropriate services that improve the quality and length of life for America's seniors."