Free Republic

As America hears of more doctors leaving the profession, the head of a patient-centered national health care organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota, sees both political parties in Washington making matters worse. “Huge things are happening under the surface that people don’t understand,” says Twila Brase, a public health nurse and the founder of the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom in this 33 minute video interview with The Daily Caller. “The power of the doctor is becoming subsumed by the government.” America is moving, from Brase’s perspective, from the charitable human “mission of medicine” to a cold, sterile “business of...

Republican Sen. Rand Paul split with senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to vote for a healthcare bill Tuesday night that will add about half a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next several decades.Paul sided with the overwhelming majority of senators and representatives who voted for the bill, in a decision almost certain to come up in the primary race, where he is currently joined by Cruz and Rubio.The “doc-fix” bill solves a recurring problem in the way Medicare payments are made to doctors, extends a children’s health insurance program, and requires higher-income seniors to pay higher...

When will John Boehner learn that a bill is bad news if Nancy Pelosi supports it, President Obama wants to sign it, and the press sings its praises? That’s precisely what he had on his hands with H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, a.k.a. the “Doc Fix.” Yet today we find him basking in the approbation of the Beltway establishment for getting this bill passed. This “fix” will add billions to the federal deficit, replace an unworkable price control system with a worse scheme that will dictate how doctors practice medicine and place financial burdens on seniors....

What is it with this party? Senate Democrats have really personified the “you shall not pass” war cry for anything abortion-related as of late. First, they’re filibustering what was an extremely bipartisan bill to combat human trafficking until their staffs missed the non-controversial Hyde Amendment language, which was added as a rider (standard operating procedure for most spending bills) to the law. Democrats knew this language was going to be in the law because Republicans told them months in advance. Heck, Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) aide found the language, but failed to inform the senator before the bill went to the judiciary committee...

see, two landslide elections did accomplish something. ... the “doc fix” is simply and end run around the deficit accounting process. What is more unsettling is the way this piece of legislation came about. It seems to signal that the era of the “Hastert Rule,” where the Speaker will not entertain legislation without the consent of the majority of his caucus, is dead. ... The fact that the Speaker went to the Democrats first to get votes on this spending deal shows the extent to which Boehner has been mortally injured as a leader. It also tells us that the...

House GOP leaders on Thursday used a voice vote to pass a temporary health care fix, surprising members. Maneuvering around last-second snags with some backroom intrigue, House GOP leaders used a voice vote Thursday to pass another temporary patch to prevent a massive cut to doctors' Medicare payments. The decision by Republican leaders to circumvent the planned roll-call vote caught many of their own members by surprise. "They voiced it? Oh, my God," exclaimed Budget Chairman Paul Ryan as he walked onto the House floor. Democrats could have opposed the process and demanded a roll-call vote be taken, but...

Physicians have received another holiday season reprieve from financial disaster as the Senate today easily approved a bipartisan budget deal — already passed by the House — that delays an almost 24% reduction in Medicare pay from January 1 to April 1.

A six-month stay on Medicare cuts cleared the Senate Friday but too late to avert what will be still a claims processing nightmare for physicians faced with a 21 percent reduction in their reimbursements. With the House gone for the weekend, no final resolution is possible before next week, and the Senate itself only acted hours after the deadline set by Medicare administrators. The payment cut will be eliminated and a 2.2 percent raise will be applied to Medicare reimbursements through Nov. 30. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and ranking Republican Charles E. Grassley came up with the deal...

Should we add to the deficit or pay doctors less? That’s the question Congress is contemplating after coming up $200 billion short for Medicare providers’ reimbursement this year. he $200 billion “Doc Fix” issue is controversial because Democrats are trying to separate it off from the larger health care bill snaking its way through Congress. By separating off doc fix, they can maintain that Obamacare is budget neutral, because that’s the way it was scored by the Congressional Budget Office. They can’t maintain the bill’s budget-neutrality after a doc fix is added into the mix. “Let's be clear, House Republicans...

Reform: Only a Bernie Madoff could believe the Senate's health care bill will extend coverage to 31 million Americans while cutting deficits by $127 billion over 10 years. It would be the first profitable entitlement. But that's what Majority Leader Harry Reid, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates, tells us the 2,074-page bill — said to cost only $849 billion over a decade — would do. Like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he seems to be following Vice President Joe Biden's admonition at an AARP town hall meeting that "we've got to spend money to keep from going bankrupt." We suspect Reid's...

The games continue. Pelosi hawks her health-care bill as a reduction to the deficit. She got there by excluding deficit-increasing items such as the doc fix. However, when all the health-care related items are counted, the deficit increases. Here's the punchline, with the full letter at the end of this post:

In a vote that was a highly symbolic proxy for the larger partisan fight over health care policy, the Senate on Wednesday rejected a bill that would have averted steep cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. Senate Democratic leaders had pushed the bill, which would have cost $247 billion over 10 years, as a standalone measure separate from the broader health care legislation that is President Obama’s top domestic priority. The bill was meant to fix a longstanding payment formula that calls for annual cuts in Medicare payments to doctors — cuts that for years Congress has avoided with yearly...