Conservatives Filibuster Medicare Patients

On Thursday, Senate conservatives blocked a bill that would have averted a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. The bill, which would have canceled a reduction in Medicare fees and increased doctor pay by 1.1 percent, passed the House last week 355-59. But the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the bill by only one vote. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was the only senator to miss the vote, besides Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who is undergoing treatment for a brain tumor. The bill had proposed offsetting the increased doctor pay by reducing payments to Medicare Advantage's private fee-for-service insurers, a provision opposed by the White House. In a "misleading" move, the Bush administration announced this week it had asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to delay making payments to physicians until July 15, giving the Senate time to pass another bill after the July 4th recess. Yet as Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) explained, the administration was simply following existing law, and it is "misleading the public by claiming" to help ameliorate the negative effects of a legislative move it endorsed.

SENIORS SUFFER MOST: The recalcitrant position of the conservatives and the White House creates real victims. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, Senate conservatives "are playing a dangerous game of chicken. The only losers will be Medicare patients, old people." "A lot of physicians will limit the number of Medicare patients they will see" as a result of the pay cut, said Dr. Lee Schoeffler, a Tulsa, OK ophthalmologist. A poll by the American Medical Association found that 60 percent of physicians "said they would limit the number of new Medicare patients they would see if a cut took effect." Even as doctors sought to ward off the latest cuts, the CMS announced Monday the legislation would mean Medicare payments to doctors would undergo a further drop another 5.4 percent in 2009. It is not just Medicare patients and doctors who will feel the pinch. "Most private insurance companies will begin reducing their reimbursement rates to doctors because they use Medicare as a benchmark" in setting their rates. "It doesn't hit just Medicare," Schoeffler said. "It works its way down into every part of the community."

CONSERVATIVES VERSUS DOCTORS: Physicians groups aim to remind voters of the fact that the blame for the pay cut lies squarely at the feet of conservatives this fall. The American Medical Association is planning a television and radio campaign ad targeting conservative senators who voted against the legislation. The ads will run initially in six states: Mississippi, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. Yesterday, the Texas Medical Association withdrew its endorsement of Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) for reelection, citing his vote against the Medicare payment bill. "The Texas Medical Association Political Action Committee (TEXPAC) is outraged that you made the decision to follow the direction of the Bush Administration and voted to protect health insurance companies at the expense of America's seniors, those with disabilities, and military families," wrote El Paso physician Manuel Acosta, chairman of the medical association's board, in a letter to Cornyn.

BUSH BULLYING: The White House was adamant in its opposition to the bill, citing concerns that it cut privatized Medicare Advantage (MA) funding, in effect prioritizing a minority of MA patients at the expense of the more than 80 percent of seniors who are enrolled in traditional Medicare programs. Senate conservatives used the White House veto threat as a shield for their own votes. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) denounced the congressional leadership for bringing the measure for a vote, "[d]espite knowing that their bill was doomed from the start." Politico reports that the White House pushed vulnerable senators to switch their votes in some "eleventh-hour" dealings. Officials promised Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and previously supported a similar Medicare bill, "an administrative fix to increase Medicare reimbursements for oncologists." Specter denied that there was a "quid pro quo." Speaking on the Senate floor after the failed vote, Reid ridiculed conservatives for being too afraid to stand up to the deeply unpopular president. "But I'm watching a few of them pretty closely and I would say to all these people who are up for election, if you think you can go home and say 'I voted no' because this weak president, the weakest political standing since they have done polling, 'I voted because I was afraid to override his veto.' Come on!"

Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-MA) office has begun "laying the groundwork for a new attempt to provide universal healthcare." The plans signal that Kennedy "intends to work vigorously to build bipartisan support for a major healthcare initiative when he returns to Washington in the fall."

NEW YORK: Gov. David Paterson (D) is reviewing legislation that would ensure child prostitutes are "treated as victims and get services to help escape exploitation."

MASSACHUSETTS: "[L]egislators approved a bill they said will strengthen the state's child welfare system, with stricter standards for how agencies investigate abuse."

KENTUCKY: State police are scaling back patrols to save gas.

THINK PROGRESS: Fox News guest: Guantanamo Bay is "really more like a Boy Scout camp than it is a prison camp."

WONK ROOM: CNN's Larry King Live panders to Big Oil "heroes."

MOJO BLOG: Torture critic Phillipe Sands writes to torture advocate John Yoo about Yoo's false statements during congressional testimony.

MEDIA MATTERS: MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "They're the working-class white voters...the regular folks."

"All other goals -- including...reform of de-Baathification and disarmament laws...were rated 'satisfactory.'"
-- Washington Post,, 7/2/08, on a U.S. Embassy report about Iraq

VERSUS

"[I]mplementation of the [de-Baathification] law is bogged down by infighting between politicians. ... The government has still not appointed a seven-member panel to replace the de-Baathification Committee."
-- Reuters, 6/17/08