Overcoming the Musk veto

The last Congress was close to passing a bill that would have given relief to physicians and practices, but it was scuttled at the last moment aftewr Elon Musk used his platform X to attack the effort.

Anders Gilberg, senior vice president for government affairs at MGMA, discusses how the organization will approach working with Congress with the added wrinkle of the outsized influence of the world's richest man.

Transcript:

Anders Gilberg: Well, we just have to regroup and re-educate. I mean, it is a new Congress. There are new members elected. Some have retired, as I mentioned. And so we're regrouping. We I expect legislation to be reintroduced that we had last year, worked with the American Medical Association and a lot of the physician specialties to address this issue, both from a short term and a longer term perspective.

Really what we need is a longer term reform of the physician payment system, and that's what we have the eye toward. It was just fixing that end of year piece last year, so we could have a stable system in which to hopefully negotiate a longer term solution, which everybody, everybody believes that we need some more stability in physician payment. you know, it's. it's probably not productive to go back and think, why did that happen to us and whatnot? It's just the reality of government these days. and, it's a little less certain as perhaps as it was in the past. and with the new president, the priorities change and shift. So, this presidency is unique. It's not unique. But in my experience, having a president who was, you know, had a kind of a gap in between their two terms is is unique for, for me at least. So in many ways, Trump starts this final term of presidency with the impetus to get stuff done now and work with Congress to get stuff done.

Now, his power will never be greater than it is now. you know, a year from now who'll be closer to being, you know, a lame duck president because he can't be re-elected. And he certainly has the bully pulpit at the moment and a mandate through the election. And so it's it's harnessing that enthusiasm for some of these other issues and regrouping and just making sure that MGM's priorities and priorities for physicians are included in some of the vehicles, these legislative vehicles, that, you know, whether it's some of your listeners might have heard that Trump wants one beautiful bill. I think he said, now there's some discussion. Should there be one bill or two bills? I even heard today, maybe three bills. Three beautiful bills. And, I'd say for me at least, the best tactic is to get in the first one, because the second and third one will be harder to pass. So if that is indeed what the way that Congress starts to go about their business. you know, we're regrouping and coming right out of the gate to ensure that our priorities, especially the ones that were left over from last year, are dealt with.

There was one that didn't make the cut last year, which was really disappointing. Excuse me, which was a reform of prior authorization in the Medicare Advantage program and Medicaid and some other federal programs. It's a bill that had, bipartisan support supermajorities in both houses. And the Congressional Budget Office scored it at zero. Should have made it, but didn't. So it's some of those things that were urgently working to include in any the next vehicle, not the third vehicle, but the next legislative vehicle. So still a lot of very important things going on. And then, you know, whether it's Congress or the administration. We do have to wait a bit, like we talked about for the confirmation hearings to finish up. To work with the leadership. But, I mean, there is a strong deregulatory agenda with this administration. I worked on what was called something called patience over paperwork with the first Trump administration. And we were modestly successful at that point in reducing some of that regulatory red tape for medical practices and doctors.

So I think like that'll be a big push after a lot of the early fanfare and those kind of big ticket issues like tax reform and maybe immigration. You know, some of that core, those core issues about the role of government, especially in medicine. Those will come to the fore. And I think we'll we'll have the ability to influence those those ideas and those those.