Red Ink Hiding

So, the Liberals in Congress are acknowledging that the budget impact from the Seante Finance Committee was a hoax. Now they (led by Harry Reid) want a seperate bill to deal with the "Doc Fix." Prior legislation required reimbursement to doctors serving Medicare patients to be reduced annually to keep the cost in line for the total Medicare budget. Congress has deferred these rate cuts (as they will under the current reform) to the point that to pay for all of those deferred cuts, the current cut would amount to a 21.5% pay cut. Two things are clear. One, Medicare doctors are already underpaid. Cutting their rates by another 21.5% would be adding insult to injury. The second issue is that if the doc fix were not implemented, even more doctors would refuse to accept Medicare patients. As discussed in a previous post, the Senate Finance committee assumed that the doc fix would not take place and that doctor reimbursement would grow at a "Sustainable Growth Rate." This allowed the Finance Committee to "save" $247b over the next 10 years. As discussed, this would never happen and the Finance Committee bill would eventually reflect this cost, and expose the lie that was built into the Finance Committee bill. This brings us to today, where Harry Reid and a Senator from Michigan (the bailout state), want a seperate bill to deal with the doc fix, so they can still claim that the "Reform" bill is at worst deficit neutral. Clearly they think we are not paying attention. Also, it proves that they do not give a damn about deficits. They just want "reform" to be wrapped up in "defict neutral" wrapping paper. This is in addition to the "Cadillac Tax" that was also a big source of revenue, contributing to the deficit neutrality of the bill. As predicted, the Unions have leaned on Congressional Liberals, and even that tax is in jeaopardy. It's safe to say that Obambi will not call a stop to these games, as he needs a political victory to get his ratings out of the basement. Sadly, all of this is taking place in the context of more Americans opposed to reform that are in favor. We're getting something we don't want and we have to pay for it too!