Medical organizations are criticizing the continuing resolution (CR) signed by President Donald Trump for not addressing the Medicare physician pay cuts.
The Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act of 2025 will fund the government through the end of September and avoids a shutdown. However, the bill did not address the 2.83% pay cut facing doctors, including radiologists, under the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Medicare physician fees schedule (MPFS).
“The passage of the CR without a Medicare physician payment fix represents a massive congressional failure and blatant abdication of duty to our nation’s physicians and their beneficiaries,” said Anders Gilberg, senior vice president of government affairs for the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), in a prepared statement.
Not addressing pay cuts instituted by CMS has been a concern in recent times among medical professionals, including the CR that was passed in December 2024 under the Biden administration. That bill’s initial draft included a proposal to offset the 2.8% reimbursement cut via a 2.5% increase to what CMS had finalized, otherwise known as a “doc fix.” Despite the bipartisan support, that draft was nixed in favor of a trimmed version after vocal opposition by now-President Trump.
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) said on March 11 on X (formerly Twitter) that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) agreed to include the “doc fix” in the reconciliation bill expected to be signed later in 2025.
Advocates previously said that continued cuts to the MPFS will negatively affect the physician workforce and patient access to primary care.
Howard Sandler, MD, chair of the board of directors at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), said that the issue of patient access to care especially goes for rural and underserved areas. He also highlighted the Radiation Oncology Case Rate (ROCR) program, which was reintroduced last week in Congress, in a statement to AuntMinnie.com.
“The ROCR program … is the only viable solution to stabilize payments for radiation oncology and safeguard access to high quality radiotherapy treatments,” Sandler stated. “We encourage Congress to pass the ROCR Act to protect access to cancer care and set a precedent for sustainable physician payment reform.”
Gilberg meanwhile pointed out that the “inherently flawed” Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 led to the declining reimbursement being experienced by doctors the past handful of years. However, he added that Congress must protect the financial viability of medical practices by averting these cuts until it can implement comprehensive physician payment reform.
“To avoid this annual chaos, which increasingly threatens beneficiary access to care, Congress must realize permanent, sustainable solutions, such as implementing an annual, inflation-based physician payment update tied to the full Medicare Economic Index and modernizing Medicare’s antiquated budget neutrality policies,” Gilberg stated.
The American College of Radiology (ACR) meanwhile noted that the CR signed into law extends statutory language preventing the administration from imposing a 15% cap on facilities and administrative (F&A) cost reimbursement.
The college joined a coalition letter calling for the prioritization of “robust” funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and preservation of existing protections against reimbursement cuts for NIH grantee F&A costs.
“ACR will continue to work with our colleagues across the healthcare profession to include long-term Medicare payment reform in the government funding package expected later this year,” the college stated.