Recently, (5/21/26) H.R. 8163 passed out of the House Ways & Means Committee. This legislation is a critical step toward fixing Medicare's broken physician payment system. By improving payment stability, increasing transparency, and ensuring that reimbursement better reflects the cost of providing care, this legislation will help protect physician practices and preserve patient access to care.
Urge your Representatives to cosponsor H.R. 8163 and ask your Senators to introduce companion legislation.
H.R. 8163 would deliver four critical improvements for physicians:
- Modernize Budget Neutrality Rules: Raises the outdated budget neutrality threshold from $20 million, unchanged since 1992, to $54.3 million and indexes it to inflation using the Medicare Economic Index (MEI), helping prevent unnecessary across-the-board payment cuts.
- Increase Payment Stability: Caps annual increases or decreases to the Medicare conversion factor at 2.5%, providing greater predictability for practice budgeting and financial planning.
- Improve Payment Accuracy: Requires CMS to compare policy estimates with actual claims data and make prospective adjustments, reducing unwarranted cuts driven by inaccurate utilization projections.
- Reflect Real Practice Costs: Requires CMS to review and update clinical wage, equipment, and supply cost inputs simultaneously at least every five years, helping ensure physician payments better reflect the cost of delivering care.
Now Congress must act to enact this legislation and deliver the stability Medicare physicians need to keep their doors open and protect patients’ access to care.
Take action now.
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