A stopgap measure to keep the government funded through the end of September is expected to include measures to avert cuts in pay for doctors treating Medicare patients and extend eased Medicare telehealth rules, according to five industry lobbyists granted anonymity to share details of private negotiations.
The health measures to be incorporated into the spending patch next week — necessary to avoid a shutdown after March 14 — are expected to be relatively narrow. Still, Speaker Mike Johnson has been promising to move a “clean” continuing resolution that would fund government programs at current levels through the end of the current fiscal year. Any new provisions could be viewed with scrutiny by members of the razor-thin House GOP majority.
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), who co-chairs the GOP Doctors’ Caucus, said in an interview this week that Republican leadership was open to adding provisions to the stopgap bill that would prevent cuts from going into effect that would slash deeply into salaries for doctors providing Medicare services. The cuts are based on a formula that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say doesn’t account for rising costs of care.
This provision was part of a larger health care overhaul package set to pass as part of a year-end government funding bill in December, but then-President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk complained the bill was overly broad, and the package got scrapped. At that time, Murphy said he got assurances from the incoming administration that the measure preventing the doctors’ pay cuts would be included in the next funding bill.
The telehealth extension through Sept. 30 would mean Medicare patients will continue to be able to see doctors from home as they have since the early days of the Covid pandemic, but is still short of the longer-term or permanent extension the industry and many lawmakers want to see.
The stopgap measure is also expected to include a number of other standard extenders typically found in funding bills, like delays to cuts to disproportionate share hospitals, which care for a large number of low-income patients.
The Affordable Care Act called for such cuts, expecting such hospitals wouldn’t have to offer less care without getting paid as millions more got covered through the law, but Congress has never let them go into effect.
