Fighting detrimental Medicare payment cuts
As our top federal legislative priority, your Academy fought all year against Medicare payment cuts of 8.5% or more that were scheduled to begin on Jan. 1, 2023.
As a result, in late December, President Biden signed into law an omnibus spending package that included partial relief from the 8.5% Medicare cuts — reducing the cut from 8.5% to 2% in 2023 by waiving the 4% congressional Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) cut in 2023 and 2024, and by reducing the 2023 conversion factor cut to 2% in 2023. An additional 1.25% cut to the conversion factor is also planned for 2024.
While the relief fell short of the AADA’s and the physician community’s requests, congressional action on this critical issue was influenced by the grassroots efforts of dermatologists, patients, and the membership of other medical associations, including:
Nearly 10,000 emails and messages to Capitol Hill from over 2,100 AADA members.
2,000 members of the public sent messages via AADA’s action alert center — at least 965 patients and 336 practice staff. The remainder were concerned citizens or physicians.
The work is not over yet. The AADA and the physician community have stressed and will continue to stress that any cut is unacceptable. The AADA, both individually and through coalition efforts, will continue to call on Congress to provide full relief to physician practices in 2023 and work to reform the broken Medicare physician payment system.
