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- Pathologists Advocate to Reduce Medicare Cuts at Leadership Summit
To prepare for the CAP’s annual Hill Day, CAP members discussed strategies for how they will engage their members of Congress and lobby to mitigate future Medicare cuts at the Pathologists Leadership Summit. Additionally, CAP Advocacy leaders discussed the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and the vital role that pathologists have in diagnosing and tracking the virus. During the third day of the meeting on May 3, CAP Advocacy leaders prepared attendees to ask Congress to mitigate the impact of a 6% Medicare cut to pathology services beginning in 2022.
During his overview of the CAP Advocacy, Chair of the Council of Government and Professional Affairs (CGPA) Jonathan Myles, MD, FCAP, reviewed how the CAP has worked together with a coalition of other medical specialties to discuss advocacy strategies to mitigate future cuts. The CAP’s Advocacy leaders also reviewed how other cuts from budgetary mechanisms, like the sequester, affect all of medicine.
In his remarks, CAP President Dr. Godbey passionately described the importance of pathologists advocating for their profession and educating legislators on the impact of their payment policies. “Our profession and the work we do on behalf of our patients is significantly impacted by those laws and policies. How those regulations and laws are implemented at the national, state, and local in many ways dictate to us how we can practice,” said Dr. Godbey. “Who better than pathologists to tell our elected officials how their decisions affect our laboratories and our patients? No one can explain our policy concerns better than we can.”
On May 4, about 200 CAP members will ask legislators to extend the relief provided in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 for next year. Specifically, the members will ask that Congress appropriate an additional $3 billion to mitigate the impact of the 6% cut to pathology evaluation and management services beginning in 2022.