Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee held a two-day hearing on the need to advance a permanent legislative solution to the "broken Medicare physician reimbursement formula" known as the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR). The hearing, entitled "A Permanent Solution to the SGR: The Time Is Now," was the first of the 114th Congress on this issue and comes about two months before the current patch expires. Though the last Congress made significant progress on the SGR policy, political realities - namely, how to pay for the bill - stalled final passage so that a one-year patch was necessarily enacted instead. At last week's hearing, legislators again expressed a strong commitment to fixing the SGR, which has plagued the health care industry for over a decade.

"This Subcommittee has made permanent repeal of the flawed Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate formula, or SGR, a top priority for the last four years," stated Health Subcommittee Chairman Joseph Pitts (R-PA). "In 2014, we reached a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on a replacement policy that enjoys widespread support both in Congress and among the stakeholder community. With the current "doc fix" expiring in less than two months, at the end of March, we are faced with the best opportunity in a decade to permanently dispose of the SGR. We are committed to rising to meet this challenge."