APTA now has a nice website for consumers to learn about issues with Medicare and contact their legislators. As always, keep pressure on your legislators as you see fit, but please copy, paste, and forward the following to as many Medicare-age folks as you know. Consumer pressure is the most powerful. Help make this information “viral”.

            Please review the information on the link below and contact your US Senators and Representatives to urge the following:

1.       Extend the moratorium on the therapy caps, or better yet, eliminate the cap completely. Medicare has an arbitrary cap on the annual dollar amount that a Medicare patient can use for payment of physical therapy. It doesn’t matter if you have more than one injury or if your condition is severe and needs some additional care. Once you hit your limit, you must either stop therapy, pay out of pocket, or switch and go to therapy at a hospital-based facility (going to a hospital based clinic is fine, but why should one have to switch?). It seems a bit confusing, but there is a moratorium on the cap (it is not currently in place) that runs out January 1st, which means it will then be in place. We want them to extend the moratorium, but really just eliminate the cap altogether. The concept of saving Medicare dollars makes sense, but physical therapy accounts for ~1% of the Medicare expenditures and it places a burden on patients and the therapy clinics and accomplishes very little savings.

2.       Allow “Direct Access” to physical therapists by Medicare patients. Most states (Wisconsin included) have practice acts that allow PT’s to see patients without a physician’s referral. PT’s are trained in seeing the public directly and screening for what conditions may, or may not need to see a doctor. Most insurance companies now accept this, but Medicare does not. They require seniors to see a doctor first and get an order which typically is an unnecessary hassle and limits access to the care they need and want.

 

Please take action! Click on this link to learn more and to use tools to contact your federal legislators.

http://www.apta.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Patient_Action_Center1&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=279&ContentID=31728

Please send this to as many Medicare-age people you know.

If you need further assistance or have questions that are not answered please contact us directly at 262.695.3057 or email: info@bmechanics.com