President Biden Signs Bill Blocking Laboratory Payment Cuts Rates

 ASCP is pleased to announce that President Biden has signed a key temporary funding bill. Importantly, the measure blocks a series of massive cuts in the Medicare Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS) for 2025.Under the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) of 2016, Congress tasked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) with revising the CLFS.  When CMS did so, it created a new fee schedule that massively undervalued payment rates.  Under that scheme, CMS was planning to cut payment rates in 2025 by up to 15 percent for approximately 800 laboratory tests—approximately one-third of the laboratory services reimbursed under the Medicare CLFS. 

Blocking cuts in laboratory payment rates for 2025 is a significant legislative victory for the laboratory community as the cuts would have wreaked havoc with laboratories wrestling with the dire shortage of laboratory professionals, the upcoming implementation of the flawed U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Final Rule on Laboratory Developed Tests, among other challenges.

ASCP has been actively lobbying Congress to fix the flaws with PAMA by enacting the Saving Access to Laboratory Services Act and blocking cuts to the CLFS. As part of our goal of attaining a sustainable CLFS, ASCP will be working with our partners in the pathology and laboratory community to secure long-term PAMA reform as part of an end-of-year legislative package that Congress is expected to consider after the election.