CVC Commends Bipartisan House and Senate Groups for Efforts Addressing CMS Payment Cuts

December 8, 2020—The CardioVascular Coalition (CVC) issued an announcement commending a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers of Congress for a series of letters recently sent to House and Senate leadership urging support for legislation to address deep payment cuts to specialty providers in the CY2021 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule that was released on December 2. The CVC announcement provides links to the Senate letter, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) letter, and the House physician letter.

Specifically, 50 members of the US Senate, 26 members of the CBC, and 19 physicians in the United States House of Representatives united to urge Congressional leaders to include legislation in any end-of-year legislative packages to protect American seniors and the nation’s health care system by blocking planned cuts to more than 30 specialty provider services scheduled to take effect January 1, 2021.

CVC stated that two pieces of bipartisan legislation have been introduced in the United States House of Representatives to mitigate the cuts, including H.R. 8702, which would hold any codes receiving a cut harmless for 2 years, and H.R. 8505, which would provide a 1-year waiver of budget neutrality adjustments under the Physician Fee Schedule.

The bipartisan group of Senators, led by Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), asserted, “The payment cuts proposed by CMS would pose a threat to providers and their patients under any circumstances, but during a pandemic, the impact is even more profound.”

The CBC lawmakers wrote, “We are aware of solutions to either waive budget neutrality requirements (H.R. 8505) or to hold specialists harmless (H.R. 8702). While not perfect, either of these solutions would give health care specialists the financial security they need to weather the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, we urge you to include a provision in the end-of-year spending package to prevent these reckless cuts from taking effect, while allowing the increases to proceed as scheduled on January 1, 2021.”

The House physicians letter stated, “As Members of Congress who directly care for patients, we understand the consequences that the upcoming reimbursement cuts will have on patient care and patient access to care. We look forward to working with you to prevent the harm that will inevitably arise if the impending cuts in the Physician Fee Schedule go into effect on January 1, 2021.”

Read Endovascular Today’s previous coverage of the Physician Fee Schedule here and here.