Facing maximum Medicare payment cuts, test providers Quest and Labcorp are urging lawmakers to revamp the rate-setting process, but getting a bill through Congress this year will be a challenge.

Diagnostics companies, under pressure from proposed Medicare reimbursement cuts, are renewing calls for Congress to pass legislation that could provide relief by changing how data for setting laboratory test payment rates is collected.

A new clinical laboratory fee schedule proposed this week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would usher in the cuts beginning next year. Lab service providers face payment reductions of 15% on 775 tests under the preliminary schedule for 2027, according to the American Clinical Laboratory Association.

Getting legislation through Congress that would avert the reductions will be a tough task, however. The House of Representatives is now in recess until after the November midterm elections.

The rate adjustment process was established under the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014. The 15% cuts are the maximum allowed under the law, which was supposed to better align Medicare reimbursement rates with those of private payers.

The proposed rates “clearly reflect the underlying flaws in the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) rate-setting process and the urgent need for Congress to enact sustainable, long-term reform through passage of the RESULTS Act,” Quest Diagnostics said in an email after the schedule was released this week.

Congress has been mulling a bill called the Reforming and Enhancing Sustainable Updates to Laboratory Testing Services Act, or RESULTS , that would direct the CMS to contract with an independent, not-for-profit commercial claims database to set payment rates.

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