Jan. 9 at 8:47 PM
U.S. clinical laboratories are appealing to Congress to prevent looming Medicare cuts of up to 15% that could affect Labcorp, Quest Diagnostics, and cancer-testing specialists like Guardant Health, Exact Sciences, and Natera. Starting in February, under current law, labs must report the rates that private insurers paid for tests in 2019. Medicare will then adjust its own payments to those levels in 2027.
The American Clinical Laboratory Association warns that sustained cuts of this magnitude could limit patient access to life-saving diagnostics and reduce investment in next-generation clinical testing, including genomic tests used for diagnosing cancer patients and sick infants.
Medicareâs approach to lab rates has been controversial: it originally surveyed commercial rates in 2016, cutting payments by up to 10% annually from 2018â2020, resulting in
$4 billion in reductionsâfour times what Congress had projected.
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