Medicare is proposing across-the-board cuts to what Trump administration officials believe are overpriced medical procedures, scans, and tests — a consequential decision designed to even the score between highly paid specialists and primary care doctors.
The federal Medicare agency justified its action by saying that more than half of the 10,000 billing codes used by physicians have never been reevaluated in the 30-plus years of this payment system. Medicare also criticized the way these services are currently priced — through surveys of physician practices that have unreliably low response rates — and wants to exclude that input going forward.
Doctors for decades have been paid using rates developed largely under the advice of the industry’s main lobbying group, the American Medical Association. Experts have railed against the system for decades, calling it complex and filled with self-interested factions that ultimately favor surgeons and higher-priced specialists over primary care clinicians.
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