SGR ad targets Virginia senators

25 January 2010

A television ad sponsored by AMA and AARP is being run in Virginia to target Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb to call for their support for legislation to permenantly repeal the flawed Medicare sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. AMA, AARP and the Medical Society of Virginia, as well as local and speciality medical societies in the commonwealth, are urging Congress to permanently repeal the current Medicare physician payment formula and replace it with one that reflects the cost of providing care to Medicare and TRICARE patients. Without a permananet fix to the SGR formula, physicians face a 21 percent physician payment cut scheduled to take effect March 1.

The U.S. Senate failed to pass legislation in October 2009 to repeal the SGR. While Senators Warner and Webb have both expressed to MSV their interest in seeing a fix to the SGR payment formula, they both voted against the measure in October citing concerns about the overall impact of the SGR on the federal budget deficit as reasons for opposing the fix.