Greg Ganske: “in Iowa, the pediatricians, the obstetricians, the family practitioners rank 47th, 48th and 50th in terms of…”

“in Iowa, the pediatricians, the obstetricians, the family practitioners rank 47th, 48th and 50th in terms of reimbursement for Medicare. With the cuts in physician payments, many of them are making decisions not to accept any new Medicare patients, and many are actually making decisions to drop out of Medicare. This comes about because there was a faulty formula for a couple of years, and what we are dealing with now is the opportunity to at least allow the administration to look at this. This does not mean that other providers will not be taken care of in a package. But we tried to put together a balanced package earlier in the year when we were dealing with prescription drugs, and we just did not get it done in the other body in order to go to a conference to work it out. Just because we cannot do everything, as has already been stated, does not mean we should not do something or at least allow the administration the opportunity to do that. This is not unique to Iowa. We are seeing this in many, many other places around the country. This is a result of a flawed formula, and it would be my plea to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to allow this minimal provision to simply prevent a lawsuit from occurring from a disaffected other provider group.”