House Passes Plan to Stop Medicare Cuts to Doctors

Published: June 24, 2010 - New York Times

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday approved a six-month plan to prevent a steep cut in doctors’ fees paid by Medicare, agreeing to a short-term solution that Speaker Nancy Pelosi called “totally inadequate” but said the House had decided to adopt after concluding that the Senate was hopelessly gridlocked and could do no better.

The vote in the House was 417 to 1, with just one Democrat, Representative George Miller of California, in opposition.

The $6.4 billion measure reverses a 21 percent cut in physician payments that had raised the possibility that some doctors might begin to turn away those covered by Medicare. The measure is retroactive to June 1.

The legislation, known on Capitol Hill as the doc fix, was approved by the Senate last week without a roll-call vote after leaders of both parties agreed to separate it from a stalled package of tax changes and safety-net spending, including extended unemployment benefits. That bill remains stuck in the Senate.

Ms. Pelosi had initially said that the House would not approve the short-term doc fix. And at a news conference Thursday, she expressed frustration with the Senate, which has failed to act on more than 200 bills already approved by the House.

“When they sent this very, very slim reed of a piece of legislation over to us, which wasn’t even really that well written,” Ms. Pelosi said, “this was totally inadequate. Members said, ‘No, we have to send something back that is bigger, but let’s see what they can do on unemployment.’ Well, it is clear they are not able to do anything this week.”

She added, “What we had hoped to do was send it back to them with unemployment insurance and the rest, but it is clear that at this time, they can’t pass that.”

Indeed, shortly after Ms. Pelosi’s news conference, Senate Republicans and one Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, filibustered the bill to extend unemployment benefits.

To get the short-term doc fix through the Senate, the cost of the measure was offset by changes in Medicare billing regulations, antifraud provisions and the tightening of some pension rules, eliminating Republican objections that it would put the federal government deeper into debt.

Medicare officials had announced on Friday that they would begin processing claims for June at the lower rate, raising pressure on the House to accept the short-term adjustment.