“Doc Fix” Made Permanent
The Senate and House approved a permanent repeal to a widely disliked formula used to pay doctors for services, and President Obama has indicated he will sign the bill. This will end more than a decade short-term measures that came to be known as the “doc fix.”
Doctors will now be encouraged to move their patients into risk-based models that base compensation on outcomes for patients rather than services .
The new system replaces a formula which required that any increase in payments to physicians be offset by savings in payments to hospitals and other .
The also extends the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, by two years, and allocates $7.2 billion additional funding for community centers.
The the new approach is estimated at $200 billion, only about a third which will be offset by lower payments to other and increased fees to wealthier beneficiaries.
The House version the resulted from bipartisan negotiations led by House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The Senate approved the measure by a vote 92-8, the final before a cut in payments to doctors more than 21% was about to become effective.
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