An End to the Medicare Therapy Cap?

If you stopped following the news coming out of Washington, I don’t blame you. It’s pretty frustrating to watch our elected representatives dilly-dally on the budget.

But here’s one piece of news worth knowing: Medicare’s therapy cap may finally be repealed.

Yesterday, the House passed a stopgap spending bill in an attempt to avoid another government shutdown this Friday. Should the bill pass the Senate, therapy caps for rehab services received under Medicare Part B will become a thing of the past.

Until now, if your outpatient therapy costs exceeded Medicare’s arbitrary limit, your provider had to request an extension of coverage and prove medical necessity. Once you reached the extension limit, you would have to pay for all outpatient therapy you received for the rest of the year.

Now, at last, the bill to permanently repeal the therapy cap is on the table. There is no guarantee it will pass in time to avoid a shutdown, though. While this particular item in the spending package enjoys bipartisan support, there are other issues that may hold up the stopgap measure’s passage.

There’s a chance the government will shut down again this weekend. However, any spending bill that is eventually passed is sure to have the therapy cap repeal written into it.

We’ll keep you posted.