Senate keeps Medicare payment formula - Citing cost, lawmakers block plan for permanent 'doc fix'
From The Washington Post:
The Senate found rare bipartisan agreement on a health-care issue Wednesday as 13 Democrats joined all 40 Republicans to block a permanent repeal of Medicare's payment formula for doctors.
Although sympathetic to fixing the root problem, lawmakers concluded that the legislation's $247 billion 10-year price tag was too steep in an era of record deficits.
The "doc fix" has become a near-annual ritual in Congress: Lawmakers routinely override the formula that sets Medicare payments to doctors, a move to prevent physicians from turning away Medicare patients because they are paid too little for the visits. While the vast majority in Congress agree that the formula, established in a 1997 deficit-reduction bill, is a failed model, producing the enormous sum needed to eliminate it has proven impossible. Instead, lawmakers resort to temporary fixes.
Although Republicans participated in talks to find ways to offset the $247 billion, no single revenue source found consensus, and GOP senators decided to turn Wednesday's vote into a referendum on deficit spending and the price tags of the huge health-care reform bills slated to come to the House and the Senate next month.
"Americans are increasingly alarmed by the expansion of our national debt and this spending binge that we're putting on the national credit card," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "They're asking us to do what they've been doing: They want us to take out the scissors and cut the charge card."
The Senate found rare bipartisan agreement on a health-care issue Wednesday as 13 Democrats joined all 40 Republicans to block a permanent repeal of Medicare's payment formula for doctors.
Although sympathetic to fixing the root problem, lawmakers concluded that the legislation's $247 billion 10-year price tag was too steep in an era of record deficits.
The "doc fix" has become a near-annual ritual in Congress: Lawmakers routinely override the formula that sets Medicare payments to doctors, a move to prevent physicians from turning away Medicare patients because they are paid too little for the visits. While the vast majority in Congress agree that the formula, established in a 1997 deficit-reduction bill, is a failed model, producing the enormous sum needed to eliminate it has proven impossible. Instead, lawmakers resort to temporary fixes.
Although Republicans participated in talks to find ways to offset the $247 billion, no single revenue source found consensus, and GOP senators decided to turn Wednesday's vote into a referendum on deficit spending and the price tags of the huge health-care reform bills slated to come to the House and the Senate next month.
"Americans are increasingly alarmed by the expansion of our national debt and this spending binge that we're putting on the national credit card," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "They're asking us to do what they've been doing: They want us to take out the scissors and cut the charge card."
posted by Sid Cottingham | 5:50 AM
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