Statement on Congressional Passage of Legislation To Limit Cuts in Medicare Payments to Physicians

I'm pleased that Congress has acted to ensure the security of our seniors' health care. A 21-percent pay cut to physicians' payments would have forced some doctors to step [stop]* seeing Medicare patients, an outcome we can all agree is unacceptable.

We should also agree, as I've said in the past, that kicking these cuts down the road just isn't an adequate solution to the problem. The current system of recurring cuts and temporary fixes was passed into law more than 10 years ago. It's untenable.

I believe we need to permanently reform the Medicare formula in a way that attacks our fiscal problems without punishing our hard-working doctors or endangering the benefits on which so many of our seniors rely. I look forward to working with Congress to achieve that goal, and I'm gratified that in the meantime they've taken the provisional step of blocking this pay cut.