In response to the Becker's Hospital Review report, "Temper AMA Panel's Power Over Physician Fees, Healthcare Economist Proposes," a comment attributed to the American Medical Association reads as the following:
At no cost to taxpayers, the AMA is proud to convene the RUC, an expert panel of volunteer physicians who make recommendations on how to value the work and resources involved in patient care. The RUC's recommendations to Medicare help divide up the payment pie, but don't increase or decrease the amount of government spending on physician services. The RUC makes recommendations, and CMS makes payment decisions. Because the RUC applies its considerable clinical expertise to the issues and follows Medicare payment policy and guidelines, the vast majority of its recommendations are accepted by CMS. The reality is that no other group exists to undertake this difficult work, and when the government was unable to review overvalued services the RUC added this to its workload.
The RUC often recommends increases for primary care services. The fact is that RUC recommendations have resulted in $4 billion in annual increased payments for office and hospital visits – the most common services performed by a primary care physician. In fact, the American Association of Family Physicians recently shared with their members information on improvements stemming from the work of the RUC to increase values for primary care services: http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/publications/news/news-now/practice-management/20101201cptcodesrise.html.