Michael Burgess (R-Texas) writes on the impending Medicare cuts:
The first principle of sensible physician workforce reform will require Congress to immediately halt any cuts in Medicare physician reimbursement. Allowing these scheduled cuts to go into effect would create a chain reaction in the medical community and diminish the quantity and quality of healthcare available to all Americans and not just Medicare beneficiaries. Congress must also address this in a long-term nature or face future catastrophe because the problem only becomes more expensive if it is allowed to persist. Allowing this situation to smolder will result in fewer physicians accepting Medicare patients, reduced access for beneficiaries, and a constriction of the physician workforce pipeline over a period when demand for medical services is projected to explode. Fewer students will pursue medicine as a career. Even fewer will choose primary care fields within medicine. And all of this will happen while the baby-boom generation begins to grow older and faces more and more medical challenges.
Bravo.
