February 6, 2006 - The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed a revised bill (H.R. 643) providing enough funding to keep Medicare Physician Payments at the same level as 2005. With a vote of 216 to 214, the House effectively averted a cut of 4.4% in the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, which would have been part of the original bill (S.1932). The Budget package will now head to the Oval Office, where President Bush is expected to sign it into law.

South Oakland will publish the Anesthesia Conversion Factors by locality when this law goes into effect.

S.1932 reduces federal government spending by nearly $40 billion from 2006 to 2010. As part of the reductions, Medicare and Medicaid spending would have been reduced $11 billion for the five-year period. However, as a spending provision, the authors of the final package responded to lobbying by the ASA, the AMA and other physician groups by providing an immediate $1.5 billion ($7.3 billion over five-years) in new funding to maintain 2005 physician payments at their current level through the end of 2006.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not yet published how it will handle the measure. Early in January, CMS announced that all services performed on or after January 1, 2006 would be paid at the reduced rate. Be sure to bookmark www.southoakland.com and return to the site often for updates regarding this and other important anesthesia news.

How did the House vote?