House Votes Cut for Medicare Insurers, Not Doctors

[flashl]

Source: Bloomberg

(Update2)

June 24 (Bloomberg) -- The House passed legislation to block a July 1 cut in fees for Medicare doctors by reducing payments instead to private insurers in the U.S. health-care program for the elderly and disabled.

The Democratic-backed measure passed today, 355-59, giving supporters more than the two-thirds margin that would be needed to override a threatened veto by President George W. Bush. The Senate has yet to act on similar legislation.

Doctors who treat Medicare patients will get a 10 percent cut in their payments on July 1 unless Congress finds money to make up the difference. Democrats want to reduce payments to UnitedHealth Group Inc., WellPoint Inc., and other insurers that provide benefits through a program called Medicare Advantage. The companies get, on average, 13 percent more than it costs Medicare to offer services itself, according to a congressional advisory commission.

"This is a reasonable compromise that both Democrats and Republicans should support,'' said Representative Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, on the House floor. "With less than a week to go before the impending physician cuts go into effect, it is time to put politics aside."

Bloomberg

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aBI26L6PHrRo

[MasonJar]

1. Finally a sensible solution from the House. Why should insurers

make more than the government allottment, while the doctors get cut? Bush at work. The doctors are the ones who actually know something, spend years learning it and do something substantial and worthwhile. We do NOT need insurers at all. They are parasites.

[Cleita]

2. I wish they'd cut the insurers out permanently.

They don't deliver what they promise and in my area most doctors refuse to take them because of their bad reimbursement record. They are just parasites that erode Medicare dollars that should be going to doctors and health care providers, not Wall Street.

[Thothmes]

3. Cut their rates more and they probably will quit

insuring medicare patients.