Supercommittee Fails to Reach a Legislative Agreement; SGR Deadline Looms
Despite several public hearings and numerous internal deliberations, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction announced on November 21 that it was unable to bridge deep partisan divides and develop a legislative package to address the federal debt. The impasse centered on tax and entitlement reform. This bipartisan group of 12 lawmakers from the House of Representatives and Senate, commonly referred to as the “Supercommittee,” was statutorily obligated to produce a bill that would reduce the federal debt by at least $1.2 trillion. The Supercommittee’s failure to reach an agreement now triggers corresponding automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion through a process called sequestration. These forthcoming spending reductions will begin in 2013 and must be evenly divided between “defense” and “non-defense” spending. While Social Security and Medicaid are exempt from the sequester process, reductions in Medicare physician reimbursement rates are capped at 2 percent annually.
Although the demise of the Supercommittee assured that further cuts to diagnostic imaging services would not be pursued by this bipartisan panel, Congress as a whole will now begin to develop legislation to prevent the scheduled 27.4 percent reduction in Medicare physician reimbursement rates from coming to fruition in 2012. ACR has long anticipated the possibility of the Supercommittee failing to reach consensus and forcing Congress, as well as the rest of the health care community, to focus its attention on preventing the scheduled cuts attributed to the flawed Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. ACR is closely monitoring the SGR debate due to concerns that an SGR patch might be financed through additional cuts to diagnostic imaging services, such as changes to the equipment utilization assumption rate or the implementation of a Medicare prior authorization program. At this time, Congress is still debating ways to offset the cost of a temporary SGR fix, as well as the total amount of time the cuts will be delayed. In addition, ACR is working diligently with legislators in the House of Representatives and Senate to include H.R. 3269, the Diagnostic Imaging Services Access Protection Act of 2011, within the forthcoming SGR legislation. All ACR members are encouraged to contact their Members of Congress and urge them to cosponsor this important bill to block the proposed multiple procedure payment reduction to the professional component of diagnostic imaging services.
