John Kerry: “I am pleased that the conference committee was able to reach agreement to provide critical tax relief for American…”

“I am pleased that the conference committee was able to reach agreement to provide critical tax relief for American workers and to extend unemployment benefits for out-of-work Americans. In a letter to conferees earlier this month, I urged the committee to include a permanent repeal of Medicare's sustainable growth rate, SGR, formula and offset the cost with savings from capping a portion of the spending for overseas contingency operations, OCO, below amounts in the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, baseline. Every Medicare expert knows that the SGR formula is irreparably flawed and needs to be repealed. If the conference committee was unable to reach agreement, doctors serving Medicare beneficiaries would face a 27.4-percent cut on March 1. While I am disappointed that conference committee was unable to permanently repeal the SGR, I am grateful that they averted the latest crisis by including a 10-month fix, freezing payments to physicians through the end of the year. However, the latest Medicare physician payment fix comes at a great cost to hospitals, clinical laboratories, and preventive health initiatives. The conference report offsets the cost of the SGR with $9.6 billion in Medicare cuts, $4 billion in Medicaid cuts, and $7.5 billion in cuts from provisions in the Affordable Care Act, ACA.…”