AMA Medicare Payment Federation Letter

On Feb. 10, 2025, ASE joined over 70 health societies in an AMA Medicare Payment Federation letter to House and Senate Leadership urging for financial relief from the 2.83% cut included in the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. The letter emphasizes the impact of this cut, coupled with an estimated 3.5% increase in practice costs due to inflation. However, it thanks the sponsors of H.R.  879,  the Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act, for introducing bipartisan legislation to stop the latest rounds of cuts in full and provide physicians with a 2% payment increase to account for inflation.  This letter builds on one of ASE’s main policy priorities- protecting physician reimbursement for Medicare. Practices have been subject to annual cuts for five years, which has threatened physicians’ ability to provide continued, quality patient care to America’s most vulnerable populations. ASE supports short-term solutions to relieve the yearly cuts to the conversion factor. However, the Society strongly believes in a long-term reform to the physician payment system through an annual inflationary update to the conversion factor (CF) based on the Medicare Economic Index (MEI) to ensure practices can keep pace with rising health care costs.