medicare

Aiming to prevent a 21-percent reduction in Medicare doctor payments next year, the House today passed legislation scrapping the flawed formula that has dictated similar cuts for most of the decade.
The count was 243 to 183, with 11 Democrats voting against the measure, and just one Republican — Rep. Michael Burgess, a Texas physician — [...]

Citing budget concerns, the Senate on Wednesday killed a $245 billion proposal to scrap the controversial formula that dictates doctor payments under Medicare.
The vote count was 47 to 53 — 13 votes shy of the 60 needed to defeat a GOP filibuster.

Just announced from the office of Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the upper chamber will vote this afternoon to bring to the floor a $245 billion proposal scrapping the formula by which doctors are paid to treat Medicare patients.

But that’s what they’re getting.
With Democratic leaders hoping to bring up legislation to fix, once and for all, the formula to pay doctors who treat Medicare patients, a great deal of attention is being paid to the inconvenient fact that Democrats have not presented a plan to pay for the bill’s $245 billion price tag. [...]

Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) isn’t the only Democrat playing hard-ball on health reform this year. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Tuesday that the House won’t support a $245 billion proposal to revamp Medicare’s physician reimbursement formula unless the Senate agrees to adopt pay-as-you-go rules for most other elements of federal spending.

The Washington Post weighs in today on the Democrats’ $245 billion plan to overhaul the way Medicare pays doctors — a bill Senate leaders are trying to divorce from broader health care reform legislation so they won’t have to find the offsets to pay for it. The Post editorialists are no fans of the strategy.
The [...]

Democrats are in the uncomfortable position of claiming that an overhaul of the way doctors are paid under Medicare is somehow not part of health care reform.

There will be no cloture vote on a $245 billion proposal to prevent pay cuts to Medicare doctors, according to the office of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who sponsored the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) filed a motion yesterday to hold a cloture vote on the bill Monday — the procedural move required to [...]

Without any ceremony, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took to the floor this afternoon and filed a motion to hold a cloture vote Monday on a 10-year, $245 billion proposal to update payments to physicians participating in Medicare.
The bill, introduced just two days ago by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), would eliminate the flawed Medicare [...]

Still arguing the Rockefeller amendment to create a public insurance plan at the Senate Finance Committee markup, we’ve moved into the phase of ideological bickering. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) just blasted the public option as the first step toward single-payer health care, and Sen. Orrin Hatch is reiterating the argument now. The comments riled Sen. [...]