The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), finalized the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) for calendar year 2025, which reduced physician payments by 2.93 percent from 2024.
The announcement was followed by a House bill introduced by Rep. Greg Murphy, MD (R-NC), the Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act, to instead raise physician payments by 1.9 percent. The bill has received bipartisan support.
According to the American Medical Association, when adjusted for inflation, Medicare reimbursement for physician services has declined 29 percent from 2001 to 2024. Murphy cited a CMS estimate of a 3.6 percent increase in practice cost expenses in 2025.
“America’s physicians are at a breaking point and access to high-quality, affordable care is at risk for millions of Medicare patients,” said Murphy. “When a physician sees a Medicare patient, they do so out of the goodness of their heart, not because it makes financial sense. Medical inflation is much higher and the cost of seeing patients continues to rise.”
