Dear Speaker Boehner and Representative Pelosi:
The undersigned medical organizations, together representing the vast majority of
practicing physicians and medical students in the United States, strongly urge Congress
to develop and pass a fiscally responsible, bipartisan agreement to prevent the
implementation of across-the-board budget sequestration cuts that would endanger
critical programs related to medical research, public health, workforce, food and drug
safety, and health care for military families, as well as trigger cuts in Medicare payments
to physicians and graduate medical education programs that will endanger patient access
to care. While we acknowledge and support the need to reduce our nation’s
burgeoning budget deficit to a fiscally sound level, we believe that the arbitrary and
formulaic sequestration approach is not the appropriate policy to attain our
nation’s long-term health care goals. Congress should take a more targeted,
rational approach that allows careful assessment of how to fulfill its long-term
commitment to seniors, uniformed service members and their families, and public
health and safety priorities.
A targeted approach should consider the long-term need to ensure Medicare beneficiary
access to health care services by preserving existing Medicare financing for Graduate
Medical Education (GME). The shortage of physicians is already projected to be over
90,000 by 2020 and to grow to more than 130,000 by 2025. Cuts to Medicare GME
financing will only exacerbate the physician shortage at a time when an estimated 10,000
seniors are entering the Medicare program each day and millions of newly insured
Americans will be seeking physician care beginning in 2014.
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