MSSNY Continues Push to Fix Medicare Payments to Physicians and Urges New York Congressional Delegation to Protect Medicaid
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MSSNY is continuing its advocacy to New York’s Congressional Delegation to restore steep cuts to Medicare payments as well as to prevent proposed cuts to New York’s Medicaid program. Last week, several MSSNY physician leaders took several days away from their practices to travel to DC to meet with New York’s Congressional delegation on both of these issues.
The bi-partisan Medicare Patient Access and Patient Stabilization Act of 2025 (H.R.879) would reverse the latest round of Medicare payment cuts and provide a positive update until the end of the year to account for cuts that have been implemented since January. Together with the AMA and the federation of medicine, MSSNY is urging that these provisions be included in the healthcare package in the Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government funded, which expires in March.
Physicians face a 2.8% cut in Medicare payments in 2025 — the fifth consecutive year of cuts—while the cost of running a practice continues to rise. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) estimates that the Medicare Economic Index (MEI), which reflects practice cost inflation, will increase by 3.5% in 2025, yet physician payments continue to decline. Physicians’ Medicare reimbursement has now been reduced by 33% since 2001 when adjusted for inflation in practice costs.
At the same time, MSSNY is working together with several patient and health care provider groups NY-Delegation-Letter-Protect-Medicaid-January-2025.pdf to urge our Congressional delegation to oppose deep proposed cuts to the Medicaid program and other essential publicly financed health insurance programs. These cuts under serious discussion would have a significant domino effect, resulting in steep cuts in New York State for programs that currently help patients and their physicians.
MSSNY will continue to track both of these issues and provide updates as they progress.
