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.