Posted on 10/21/2009 12:53:13 PM PDT by St. Louis Conservative
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 stop-gap measures that have come to be known on Capitol Hill as the “doc fix.”
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, had argued that flawed doctor payment formula was a longstanding problem and that the cost of fixing it should not count in the price tag of the big health care bill. The American Medical Association had also lobbied heavily in favor of a permanent correction of the formula, which calls for a 21.5 percent cut in Medicare fees in 2010 and cuts of about 5 percent in each of the next few years.
But Republicans seized on the proposal to suggest that Democrats were not being fully forthcoming about the cost of the broader health care overhaul, which Mr. Obama has said should be about $900 billion and not add to the federal deficits.
(Excerpt) Read more at prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Great news!!! Let us keep the pressure on!!!!
This is good. They cheated to win Senate seats for MN and AK. Let’s keep them as honest as is possible in this battle.
Wowie Zowie! I am pretty pleased with that ... I feel this is a huge blow to Reid and with impact PelosiCare as well. WE NEED TO KEEP THE PRESSURE UP!
Sorry the euphoria is still inside me...
It is a large blow. All 40 Republicans opposed the bill - including Collins and Snowe. We don’t have the list yet of all the RATS who jumped ship - so far the article only mentions Conrad, Bayh, and a couple of others. I presume Lieberman also voted No.
“as is possible” covers a wide range. By preventing them from pretending some of the costs are elsewhere we are forcing them to be more honest about the cost of the so-called reform.
They are listening folks! Keep pouring it on!
This is showing a major rift in the Senate. I didn’t think that the Senate would be railroaded into anything, especially not this poorly thought-out and dishonest monster of a bill. What a simple way to kill it—simply eliminate all the phony baloney accounting tricks around paying for it. As Reid said, “this will push the bill over $1 trillion and make it much more difficult to pass,” mainly because it will be impossible to pay for.
Obama, and now Congress, is on the hook that Healthcare Reform won’t add “one penny” to the deficit.
Joe Leiberman made this same point four weeks ago when he said that healthcare reform is an admirable reform, but it is just too expensive to undertake right now when we’re in the grip of a terrible recession and a jobless recovery.
We have to focus first on jobs, jobs, jobs.
Very good.
I know...I just LOVE sarcasm. Sorry... friends? ;)
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