MedMal Bill Could Be Among Flood Of Amendments At Finance SGR Mark Up Next Week

MedMal Bill Could Be Among Flood Of Amendments At Finance SGR Mark Up Next Week-insidehealthpolicy: Physicians could not be sued for malpractice based solely on not following federal guidelines, such as performance measures used in bonus programs, according to a  bipartisan bill that a doctor lobbyist expects to be offered as an amendment during next week's Senate Finance Committee markup of legislation to replace the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate payment formula. There is a lot of pent-up demand for Medicare legislation because Finance hasn't marked up a Medicare bill since President Obama's health care law in 2009 and annual SGR patches for years haven't included Medicare policy changes so there could be a flood of amendments at the Dec. 12 SGR markup, physician lobbyists and congressional staff say.