Do No Harm Responds to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Reimbursement Proposal to Force Cancer Hospitals to Commit to ‘Health Equity’

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wants to change the way cancer hospitals are paid – and it all centers on their willingness to commit to the woke rhetoric of “health equity.”

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb responded to CMS’s request for comments on The “Proposed Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals,” which will have an effect on the reimbursement hospitals receive, beginning in FY 2026. One component of the proposed rule is the PPS-Exempt Cancer Hospital Quality Reporting Program, which cites identity politics instead of the science to explain potential causes of differences in health outcomes among patient populations.

“As most practicing physicians would attest to,” Dr. Goldfarb said in the statement submitted to CMS, “one of the leading causes of poor health outcomes for patients is a delay in seeking healthcare treatment.” Yet, the proposed rule asserts that higher rates of hospital readmission in minorities are due to disparities in care quality. “Your proposal moves us yet further in the direction of rationing resources more heavily among one group than another,” Dr. Goldfarb stated, “for reasons completely unsupported by science but enthusiastically backed by political ideology.”

Read the full statement below.