Free Republic

As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi promised, Americans would learn more about the health care reform bill after it was passed. Yes, most have learned about the 16,500 new IRS agents who will be hired to act as the health care police. Seniors are learning more about the drastic cuts to Medicare, including the decrease in funding of home health care, hospice care and funding for medical equipment. In fact, there were so many terrible things in the thousands of pages this bill entailed, opponents didn't know where to begin to fight it. Most Americans were clearly against the...

One look at my office tells you that I'm still taking Medicare patients: The worn carpet and peeling paint give it away. Yes, Medicare's payment rates are that bad. The real threat of a further across-the-board cut of 21 percent only added to the old problems of "routine" Medicare cuts. The program now pays $53 for a standard office visit; with the cut, that would've been $40. For comparison, Aetna pays $70. Average Medicare payments to physicians have been relatively stagnant since 2001 (but reimbursements for surgery and procedures have been cut a lot). Meanwhile, average total physicians' costs have...

Democrats lost a big test vote on health care legislation on Wednesday as the Senate blocked action on a bill to increase Medicare payments to doctors at a cost of $247 billion over 10 years. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, needed 60 votes to proceed. He won only 47. And he could not blame Republicans. A dozen Democrats and one independent crossed party lines and voted with Republicans on the 53 to 47 roll call. The Medicare bill has become a proxy for larger issues in the debate over legislation to overhaul the health care system.