President Obama on Tuesday signed Congressman Sam Farr’s bill to put local doctors’ Medicare reimbursement rates in line with those of some other neighboring counties’ healthcare providers.
The bill from Congressman Sam Farr, D-Carmel, passed the Senate 64-35 Monday before heading to the president’s desk. It will permanently fix what Farr describes as “underpayment by Medicare to California doctors who practice in certain counties” such as San Benito. Those counties get lumped under a “rural” designation paying out less in reimbursements despite relatively high cost-of-living expenses in this region.
Other nearby counties affected by the rural designation include Monterey and Santa Cruz, among the 14 counties in total. The discrepancy leads to reimbursement rates that are up to 10 percent less than those in nearby areas such as Santa Clara County.
Farr in a statement contended that with the legislation approved, more doctors will want to practice here, expanding access to quality healthcare.
The legislation changes a formula initiated in 1966 when counties were labeled as rural or urban with an expecation that those designations would be updated every few years. Those updates never occurred, leaving counties with economic growth at an unfair disadvantage, the bill argues.
If enacted, the new law would require the reimbursement formula to be calculated based on “Metropolitan Statistical Areas” – which are already used by Medicare for hospital payments. The higher payments would be phased in over a six-year period starting in 2017.
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