In an unprecedented policy victory for ASTRO, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced yesterday that it will NOT implement the proposed 19 percent Medicare physician payment cuts to radiation oncology for 2010! Instead, the agency will reduce radiation oncology payments by only 5 percent over a 4-year period. In other words, the proposed 19 percent cuts for next year has been significantly reduced to only 1 percent for 2010, which will start Jan. 1.