H.R. 4302, the "Protecting Access to Medicare Act"

This House Republican Medicare bill includes a 12-month extension for Medicare physician payments and related extenders. The bill averts a nearly 24 percent cut to Medicare physician payments that would occur on April 1, 2014 and extends the 0.5 percent update for providers throughout the remainder of 2014. The legislation includes a number of new policies, some of which are used to offset the estimated $20 plus billion cost of the bill, including revaluing Medicare physician payments, establishing a new nursing home value-based payment program, establishing new market-based clinical laboratory payment rates, and changes to Medicare sequestration in out years.

This bill is not a permanent fix to the Medicare physician payment system.  In February 2014, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Orrin Hatch, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, House Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, and House Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman introduced a bipartisan, bicameral bill that would replace the broken Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula with an improved payment system that rewards quality, efficiency and innovation.  That bill passed the House on March 14, 2014, but with a poison pill offset that undermines reform for low-income families.

On March 27, 2014, the House debated H.R. 4302 and passed it by a voice vote.  President Obama signed it into law on April 1, 2014, as Public Law 113-93.