Letter: Protect funding for community health care

In 1974, Teche Action Clinic was the first Community Health Center to open its doors in Louisiana, to serve migrant sugar cane farm workers, and later, families living in fishing and bayou communities.

Like all people in this state, there is a high incidence of heart disease, obesity, cancer, and of course poverty in this area. All of this makes access to quality healthcare extremely important.

Teche Action Clinic is now a network of nine campus clinics and seven school based health center sites. And, the populations our clinics serve are largely dependent on Medicare/Medicaid or additional forms of assistance.

But when cuts to Medicare providers are threatened to be made, alarm bells go off.

Unless Congress acts swiftly before the end of the year to waive the budgetary triggers that would require the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid to make provider cuts of 8.42%, clinics like ours will suffer severely in trying to keep and pay quality doctors.

Congress has prevented such cuts before by quick action, and it needs to do so again. Otherwise, many more Medicare patients could lose access to a physician as soon as January of next year.

The waiver is a short-term fix, utilized all too often to protect the program. A long-term strategy to reform Medicare’s physician payment system is needed so these kinds of cuts don’t continue to disrupt our healthcare system.

Meaningful reforms should include:

—Tying annual physician payment adjustments to inflation plus the realistic costs associated with running a practice;

—Factoring in physicians’ value-based care, which saves money throughout the system by reducing hospitalizations and emergency room visits;

—Excluding physician payments from PAYGO budget neutrality rules.

We ask Congressman Steve Scalise and the entire Louisiana delegation to please act to provide a sustainable path forward for doctors who treat patients with Medicare in South Louisiana. By doing so, you will demonstrate your continued commitment to the health and wellbeing of our people.

Leroy Willis
President
Teche Action Clinic Board Inc.