Time for Plan B for Medicare Reimbursement Relief?

The strategy of attempting to get Medicare reimbursement relief for ambulance services as part of the health care reform package looks to be in jeopardy. That is primarily because the future of health care reform overall is in question following the Senate seat election in Massachusetts yesterday.

With the change in makeup of the Senate, reform proponents probably do not have enough votes to prevent a filibuster of any legislation. With this being the case, the most direct path to enacting a health care reform law would be for the House to take up the previously passed Senate bill and to approve it. Should that happen, the Senate bill does contain a one year extension of the relief provisions. However, early reports indicate that the House is not likely to take that approach.

It appears that if any health care reform legislation is enacted this year, it will have to be significantly less ambitious than the bills that originally came out of the House and Senate. And, unfortunately for the ambulance industry, any reimbursement relief coupled with health care reform legislation looks much farther away than it did only a couple days ago.