APTA's comments to the Senate Finance Committee's May 2012 request for input from health care stakeholders on 3 areas critical to Medicare and Medicaid reforms—program integrity, payments, and enforcement—have been included in the committee's recently released report titled "Opportunities to Curb Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Medicare and Medicaid."

Specifically, the Senate Finance Committee writes about eliminating self referral in 2 sections of the report. Under the Beneficiary Protection section, the committee notes "concern that over-broad application of the Stark law exception for physician in-office ancillary services compromises patient care by incentivizing overutilization." The committee references "increasing enforcement of existing laws, such as the Stark law" under the area titled Enforcement.  

More than 160 stakeholders in the health care community submitted comments to the Senate Finance Committee's request. During the 113th Congress, 6 Senators plan to work with key committees of jurisdiction, the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, and interested stakeholders to develop a more detailed list of administrative recommendations and potential legislative actions.  

APTA's comments can be found on the association's Self Referral webpage.