AMA Sign-on Letter to Congress on Medicare Payment Cuts for Physicians

Dear Speaker Johnson, Majority Leader Thune, Leader Schumer, and Leader Jeffries:

The undersigned national medical societies and state medical associations write to collectively urge Congress to include in the forthcoming March 2025 appropriations bill, provisions that both reverse the latest round of Medicare payment cuts and provide physicians with a meaningful payment increase that reflects ongoing inflationary pressures. Our organizations were surprised and deeply disappointed that the final version of the American Relief Act 2025 failed to include any financial relief for physicians. America’s physicians are united in urging Congress to use the forthcoming March appropriations bill as an opportunity to provide physicians with desperately needed fiscal relief that is imperative to ensuring that seniors retain access to health care services under Medicare.

Following Congressional inaction to stop the cuts finalized by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Calendar Year (CY) 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) Final Rule, payments for physicians treating Medicare patients were reduced by an additional 2.83 percent, effective January 1, 2025. The decision to allow previously enacted partial patches to earlier rounds of physician payment reductions to expire without any new relief marks the fifth consecutive year of Medicare physician payment cuts, a truly startling trend that threatens to exacerbate access to care issues throughout the United States. As a result, the unfortunate reality is that physicians’ Medicare payments have now been reduced by 33 percent since 2001, when adjusted for inflation in practice costs. In addition, CMS concluded in the CY 2025 MPFS Final Rule that the Medicare Economic Index (MEI), a cumulative measure of the individual costs of running a practice, will increase by 3.5 percent this year. Expecting physicians to provide the same level of care to America’s seniors despite being underpaid by over 30 percent and witnessing exponential growth in the cost of providing medical services is simply unsustainable. This cycle threatens to undermine the overarching stability of the Medicare program.

The decision by Congress to extend a variety of other expiring hospital, ambulance, and telehealth provisions in the American Relief Act 2025 without providing physicians any relief was equally troubling. Furthermore, our members understandably think that the federal government has essentially turned its back on physicians following the recent CMS announcement that Medicare Advantage (MA) plans will receive an average payment increase of 4.33 percent from 2025 to 2026. While MA plans receive an increase beyond the expected health care inflation rate, Congress has not acted to incorporate a temporary or permanent inflationary adjustment to the MPFS to ensure adequate access to care. Thankfully, a bipartisan collection of federal lawmakers has introduced, yet again, another solution to this serious policy issue. Representatives Greg Murphy, MD (R-NC), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Mariannette Miller-Meeks, MD (R-IA), and Kim Schrier, MD (D-WA), along with several other bipartisan House members, have introduced an updated version of the Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act, H.R. 879. This bipartisan bill will prospectively, specifically between April 1 and December 31, 2025, stop the latest round of payment cuts in full. The bill also provides physicians with a crucial two percent payment increase, which is about half of the MEI estimate for this year. Therefore, we urge Congressional leadership to adopt the Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act as part of the forthcoming legislation to fund the government beyond mid-March.

The time for legislative action is now. America’s physicians and the millions of patients we treat can no longer accept any excuses, such as an overcrowded legislative calendar, competing policy priorities, or an inability to achieve bipartisan consensus, as reasons for not including provisions that reverse the latest round of cuts and provide a crucial payment update in next appropriations package. We appreciate the opportunity to outline the many fiscal challenges facing physician practices and stand ready to assist with the overarching effort to expeditiously enact this much needed legislation. Our Medicare beneficiaries and the physicians who treat them deserve the stability that this legislation will provide.

Sincerely,