Physicians Dodge Medicare Pay Cut After AAFP Puts Up Fight

Primary care physicians avoided another potential payment cut when the House and Senate agreed to remove a proposed Medicare pay reduction from trade legislation that recently became law.

The law, the Trade Preferences Extension Act, initially included a 0.25 percent Medicare payment cut that would have been in effect from October 2024 to March 2025. The proposal didn't sit well with the AAFP, which wrote to legislators in May to argue against the cuts.

"Continuing to double down on the sequester is destructive enough; using these reductions in Medicare to pay for non-Medicare programs is even more alarming to family physicians," AAFP Board Chair Reid Blackwelder, M.D., of Kingsport, Tenn., said in the letter.