Berkley bill would cut Medicare paperwork

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Oct. 4, 2001 | 9:43 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Doctors drowning in Medicare paperwork would get some relief under a newly re-tooled bill, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said Wednesday.

Many doctors say Medicare investigators swamp them with thousands of pages of regulations in overzealous attempts to identify dishonest doctors filing fraudulent claims. Medicare unfairly threatens to audit honest doctors in far too many cases, lawmakers said.

The Medicare bureaucracy is so bloated that many physicians have simply dropped Medicare patients or plan to drop them, lawmakers said.

A collection of Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been toiling to draft a law that reduces Medicare red tape. Berkley emerged as a lead bill negotiator and helped convince a majority of House members to support the legislation.

But critics on two key House committees and in the Senate had blocked the bill. They were concerned it prevented Medicare officials from detecting doctors who overcharge the system.

After a late-night Tuesday session, lawmakers reached a compromise that reduces paperwork but still allows reasonable Medicare investigations, Berkley said.

"This bill allows doctors to spend less time on paperwork so that they can spend more time with their patients," said Berkley, whose husband is a doctor.

The new bill, now named for Berkley and Rep. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., has a good chance of passing in the next few weeks as lawmakers inch toward adjourning for the year, said Berkley and others. The bill has the support of Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, a key leader.