We know at the ACC we can’t sue our way to greatness, but this lawsuit against Secretary Sebelius and HHS had to be filed. As I hope all of you know, it has. The judge has scheduled a preliminary hearing for early January already, and we are in expedited “discovery” involving CMS and HHS, AMA and others. The federal court in Florida, where many affected Medicare patients and physicians reside, is taking this seriously it appears.

If you haven’t actually read the complaint, you NEED to. It is prominently located on the ACC's Campaign for Patient Access Web site (www.campaignforpatientaccess.org). Read it, and you’ll understand why the College, joined by ASNC, ASE, ABC, The Cardiology Advocacy Alliance (CAA), the Florida Chapter of the ACC, a coalition of California cardiologists had to move forward with this in addition to our on going legislative, regulatory, and media efforts. Reading the complaint will make it crystal clear why we need to do this. It’s even in the best interest of CMS itself! The Rule will hurt access to care, and particularly for disadvantaged populations, and it will drastically increase Medicare costs by shifting services to the hospital setting. We well understand that federal courts defer hugely to federal agencies, but we believe we have a very compelling case, and we are going to pursue it with vigor.

The announcement made major media coverage, including prominent first section story in USA Today, and widely across the AP and other news networks. Fox News covered it live with an interview with ACC SVP of Science and Quality Janet Wright, FACC (which I'll post when I have the link). BTW, I was impressed with the comment in USA Today by Deputy Administrator of CMS, Jonathan Blum (generally a very good guy), who blamed our cut on a need to improve financing of primary care. We are on record everywhere as supporting primary care -- but, the agency was supposed to use valid data to make calculations on payment based on a very explicit regulation process created by Congress, not based on a political philosophy, no matter how valid. And, most of the reallocated money in the Rule is going to other specialty care, not primaries.

We will keep you all up to date on this process.

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