Health Care Reform Becomes Law
President Obama recently signed the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" and the "Affordable Health Care for America" budget reconciliation bill into law, bringing over a year of Congressional debate over health care reform to a close.  On the positive side, the legislation extends health care coverage to more than 5 million of California's uninsured, reforms insurance industry practices to protect patients and physicians, and increases Medicare and Medicaid rates by 50 percent for primary care and for general surgeons practicing in rural areas. On the negative side, the legislation adds financial instability to the Medicare program by failing to repeal Medicare's flawed funding formula known as the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) and by establishing an unaccountable, non-elected Medicare commission to make arbitrary cuts.  It also fails to increase Medi-Cal's low reimbursement rates for many doctors, and includes dubious "quality" reporting requirements. Whether you personally believe the legislation is good or bad, one thing is certain: physicians will continue to face a number of challenges as the details of the new law and the thousands of new pages of federal health care rules become known in the weeks, months and years ahead. Please see the forthcoming issue of ACCMA Bulletin for more in depth information about the passage of health care reform legislation.