[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16297]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   MEDICARE PHYSICIAN PAYMENT HEARING

  (Mr. BURGESS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to advise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, maybe it is because I am also a physician, 
but one of the questions I get most frequently at town hall meetings or 
just after the town hall meeting is: How come I turned 65 and I have 
got to change doctors?
  The reason, Mr. Speaker, is because we are relying on a formula, a 
10-year-old formula, a failed formula that does not adequately 
reimburse physicians' offices for what it costs them to deliver the 
care to our Medicare patients.
  To that end, a bill has been introduced, H.R. 5866, and I would 
encourage other Members to spend some time over the August break to 
look at this bill. Yes, it is a little long. Yes, it is a little 
complex. But it is important work. It ensures that physicians receive 
full and fair payment for their services based on the cost of the 
inputs that costs them to run their practice. It creates quality 
performance measures that allows patients to be informed consumers. It 
builds on the quality improvement that we have done in this Congress 
and that private medicine has done throughout the country for the last 
decade. And, finally, it seeks to find reasonable methods of paying for 
these benefits within the bill.
  Mr. Speaker, the time has come to revise this failed formula that 
serves no one good. We need to provide physicians with regular, stable, 
predictable updates to the cost of their practices.

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