medicare

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. [...]

Medicare is often described as a fee-for-service program, meaning exactly what it sounds like: physicians and hospitals bill the government for each individual service they provide to Medicare beneficiaries, and Washington writes them a check in return. The more services rendered, the more providers are paid — a system that’s fine when those services are [...]

It’s no news that Republicans are up in arms over the recent White House decision to bar insurance companies from encouraging their customers to oppose the Democrats’ health reform plans. But today they upped the ante.
In a letter to the White House, Republican leaders have threatened to block confirmation of 10 White House nominees to [...]

A central component of Democrats’ health care reform plans would bring more people under the umbrella of coverage, but less clear is whether more patients would find treatment.

In a phone interview with TWI following his speech to the Tea Party crowd this afternoon in Washington, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) laid out his philosophy for applying the Constitution to health care. In a nutshell: invoke the Constitution when it’s expedient to do so, ignore it when it’s not.
Asked whether states should use the [...]

We wrote here recently about the oddity of congressional Republicans blasting the thought of creating a public plan while at the same time lauding the virtues and successes of Medicare, which just happens to be government-run. Well, they’re still at it.
Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), a member of the Gang of Six, gave the [...]

RESTON, Va. — Gathering outside of the South Lakes High School in this well-heeled exurb of Washington, more than a hundred supporters and opponents of health care reform–or health insurance reform, as it was rebranded in blue-and-white signs passed out by Organizing for America–carried a sense of valedictory.

In the last month, there’s been a rediscovery of Ronald Reagan’s 1965 recording “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine.” Sarah Palin deserves a lot of the credit for this; she cited the speech in her 2008 debate with now-Vice President Joe Biden. Something that’s largely been forgotten, though, was that a much more famous [...]

Following up on Dave’s post, Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), the Republican point-man on Senate health reform legislation this year, says he’s still interested in forging a bipartisan health reform deal — so long as the bill can win an overwhelming majority in the upper chamber.
“Something as big and important as health care legislation should have [...]