Medicare Fees: The RUC Is Bad, But There's No Point Regulating It

Politico recently ran an interesting story on the Relative Value Scale Update Committee — the “RUC”, a body convened by the American Medical Association that fixe the fees that Medicare pays physicians. It describes the absurdity of a committee of physicians fixing fees that the government pays physicians, and demonstrates how the RUC pays primary-care practitioners much less than specialists.

The Politico story also described a lawsuit which asserts that the RUC should be regulated like a Federal Advisory Committee, and not allowed to operate in secret as if it were just another committee of a private professional society.

Nevertheless, regulating the RUC as a Federal Advisory Committee would not solve the fundamental problems.

Read the entire column at the Independent Institute's Beacon blog or NCPA's Health Policy Blog.