“Fixing” this at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars was essentially a bribe Obama is paying AMA not to oppose Obamacare. This amount was originally included as part of the cost of the House health reform plan, but CBO scored that plan as adding about one quarter trillion a year to the deficit. In Obama’s health care speech he insisted on a reform plan that wouldn’t add anything to the deficit, i.e., that would be fully paid for by budget savings or tax increases without any “gimmicks.” So the House “solved” their problem by just removing the physician fix from their bill, instantaneously making it budget-neutral. In the meantime, they planned to enact the physician fix separately without paying for it. That is, it simply will add to the $90 trillion unfunded liability faced by Medicare. But, of course, this separate bill won’t be counted as part of health reform (even though the doctors would vehemently oppose Obamacare absent being bought off), hence Obama’s promise in a very narrowly construed sense won’t be broken.
How’s that for honesty and transparency?
Good luck finding a doctor who accepts Medicare in the near future. Good luck finding a doctor in general if Obamacare is enacted into law. So who will be the health care providers in the future? Nurse practitioners and physician assistants, who lack the education, training, and clinical expertise of physicians but are oh, so much cheaper to pay for.