Sustainable Growth Rate Fix

Floor Speech

Mr. DUFFY. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to discuss the issue of Medicare and Medicare reimbursement payments to doctors who provide health care for our seniors.

Currently, the reimbursement formula for our doctors who provide these services is one that has become so low that many doctors in America aren't providing services and care to our seniors.

It brings me to a bill that is coming up tomorrow in the House. It is the doc fix. It is a fix to the SGR. What that means is, there is on the horizon a 24 percent cut coming to Medicare reimbursements for our doctors who provide care for our seniors.

If that cut goes into effect, it is going to have a devastating impact on the care that our seniors can receive. So tomorrow we are going to have a fix on the floor that takes away the threat of the 24 percent cut, and we pay for it. What we do is we bring certainty to the doctors who provide this care for our seniors and stability to the payment system.

Now, this isn't the first time this issue has been brought up. This has been an ongoing problem, and so today, on throwback Thursday, we are going to take a trip down memory lane. Four years ago, during the ObamaCare debate, House Republicans brought up this very issue and said: Listen, let's not hold our seniors hostage. Let's actually come forward together and have a doc fix that is paid for to make sure our seniors don't get cut in regard to reimbursements. My colleagues across the aisle said ``no'' to this fix that was paid for, and in the end we have had to have short-term fixes that I think threaten the care for our seniors.

I hope all my colleagues tomorrow will stand with us to have a long-term fix to this program, to make sure our seniors aren't held vulnerable to potential inaction by Congress.

I also want to talk about what happened in regard to our seniors in the ObamaCare debate. Instead of fixing payment in Medicare to our doctors for our seniors, instead of shoring up a plan that helps our seniors, instead of doing that, what my friends across the aisle did in ObamaCare is they looked for a pay-for, and they saw a pot of money in Medicare, and they took almost a trillion dollars out of Medicare to use for ObamaCare.

News flash: the CBO, and the President, everybody acknowledges that Medicare is on a pathway to going broke. Twelve years from now it runs out of money. So instead of shoring up the fund, making sure that we meet the promise to our seniors, my friends across the aisle took almost a trillion dollars out of it, making it more vulnerable.

Then, a program that works well, especially for my seniors back in Wisconsin, Medicare Advantage--taking money out of Medicare Advantage, a program that actually works, giving some choice and control to our seniors. I think our seniors deserve better than this. The war on the seniors should stop, and is going to stop hopefully tomorrow with a bipartisan effort that does what we should have done in the ObamaCare debate but fixes payments to doctors so they can continue to provide lifesaving health care to our seniors.

Let's stand together as a House. Let's stand with our seniors. Let's get this done tomorrow.

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