“Having surveyed the healthcare landscape, MedPAC recognized that physician pay has not kept up with the cost of practicing medicine,” AMA president Jack Resneck Jr., MD, said in a March 15 news release from the association.
According to the AMA, Medicare physician payments have declined by 26 percent from 2001 to 2023, with physicians seeing a 2 percent payment reduction for 2023 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and the growing costs of running a practice.
In addition to expressing support for the move from MedPAC, the AMA and 134 other health organizations sent a letter March 15 to congressional leaders urging them to pass legislation for an annual inflation-based payment update based on the MEI.
