Medicare bill passage – why get so excited?

A reader on a listserv recently posted the following commentary about the recent passage of the Medicare bill; I couldn’t have said it better myself:

“Why are we so excited to get a 0.5% or 1.1% increase (while other forms of providers are fairing much better in terms of annual increases)? All this means is that our revenues will continue to fall further behind in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. Yet we treat it as a victory. This is absolutely absurd.”

Another cut is proposed for year 2009 and you’re going to have to go through all of this again. My point – start making concrete plans NOW on how you, as a physician practice, is going to address declining reimbursement, higher inflationary costs, and the dual impact of each on physician compensation.

As the old saying goes: “People don’t plan to fail……….they just fail to plan.”