Budget Cuts May Harm Access To Imaging

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Cuts to the Medicare budget may be the most threatening surgery of all for patients in want of health imaging navy.

assembly made hidden cuts previous this year in reimbursement for many health imaging navy that Medicare patients meet in doctor offices and independent imaging centers.

Experts dread these cuts will mean minus access and elevated overprecedes for many patients, especially those in rural areas.

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assembly, say advocates, should require a two-year moratorium on the cuts in order to more smarmy understand their force on patients.

first in 2007, imaging navy will be condensed by assembly by some $8 billion over 10 time. Those reductions symbolize more than one-third of the utter Medicare cuts in the 2005 debit decrease Act.

The payment reductions shape a thick variety of health procedures and tests presentd in doctor offices and imaging centers. For example, reimbursement would be cut:

• 35 percent for ultrasound to lead minus-insidious breast biopsies;

• 50 percent for PET/CT scans worn for diagnosing and running tumors;

• 40 percent for bone density studies for diagnosing osteoporosis; and

• 42 percent for MR angiography that detects aneurysms in the precede.

Given the range of these and related cuts, advocates advise that many doctors will prone discontinue or cut back on the imaging they present in independent imaging centers or their own offices. If this happens, patients will have to take these navy at hospitals, which can be greatly advance away and regularly interest elevated out-of-short overprecedes for patients. As a upshot, convenient access to navy that many Medicare patients rely on will no longer be existing.

It's supposed that patients in rural areas are prone to be the hardest hit.

Unfortunately, say advocates such as the Access to checkup Imaging alliance, these reductions were made lacking open hearings, open contest or open discussion. The reductions were made lacking open participation, even still they will prone shape the lives of many Medicare beneficiaries.

Instead, the alliance believes assembly should require a two-year moratorium on imaging cuts, so the Government Accountability task can reading the arise.

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