With a new calendar year just over two months away, the medical and healthcare communities have begun the annual flurry of end-game activity seeking to influence payment rates.  Anesthesiologists need little reminder of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) threat and the 27 percent cut in Medicare payment that will take effect on January 1, 2013, unless Congress intervenes. On October 15th, more than 100 national medical societies, including the American Society of Anesthesiologists, sent letters to the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee highlighting the urgency of fixing the SGR problem for a new reason: The sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula is an enormous impediment to successful health care delivery and payment reforms that can improve the quality of patient care while lowering growth in costs. Physicians facing the constant specter of severe cuts under the SGR cannot invest their time,...