Monday, June 30, 2008
Thank you US Senate from Doctors, Elderly and Disabled.. What no Reach Around??
I personally would like to thank Congress for not havintg the balls to stand up to corporate America and allow the amount of payments for medical services for our elderly and disabled to be cut by 10.6% effective July 1, 2008. Thanks to your foresight and strong fiscal responsibility many doctors in the US will choose not to take Medicare patients as the reimbursement is already too low and the decrease will make it extremely difficult for many to stay in practice if they have a large majority of patients on Medicare. So my friends if you think it's hard to find a Doctor now just wait to see what's on the horizon. If you'd like to blame anyone specific here are the names of the senators who chose to tell America's Seniors and Disabled as well as their doctors that they don't matter.Vote, state, Name, PartyNay AL Sessions, Jefferson [R] Nay AL Shelby, Richard [R Nay AZ Kyl, Jon [R] No Vote AZ McCain, John [R] (And this man wants to be your President!)Nay CO Allard, Wayne [R] Nay FL Martinez, Mel [R] Nay GA Chambliss, C.[R] Nay GA Isakson, John [R] Nay ID Craig, Larry [R] Nay ID Crapo, Michael [R] Nay IN Lugar, Richard [R] Nay IA Grassley, Charles [R] Nay KS Brownback, Samuel [R] Nay KY Bunning, Jim [R] Nay KY McConnell, Mitch [R] Nay LA Vitter, David [R] Nay MS Cochran, Thad [R] Nay MS Wicker, Roger [R] Nay MO Bond, Christopher [R] Nay NE Hagel, Charles [R] Nay NV Ensign, John [R] Nay NV Reid, Harry [D] Nay NH Gregg, Judd [R] Nay NH Sununu, John [R] Nay NM Domenici, Pete [R] Nay NC Burr, Richard [R] Nay OK Coburn, Thomas [R] Nay OK Inhofe, James [R] Nay PA Specter, Arlen [R] Nay SC DeMint, Jim [R] Nay SC Graham, Lindsey [R] Nay SD Thune, John [R] Nay TN Alexander, Lamar [R] Nay TN Corker, Bob [R] Nay TX Cornyn, John [R] Nay TX Hutchison, Kay [R] Nay UT Bennett, Robert [R] Nay UT Hatch, Orrin [R] Nay VA Warner, John [R] Nay WY Barrasso, John [R] Nay WY Enzi, Michael [R] This data came from the following site: http://www. govtrack. us/congress/vote. xpd?vote=s2008-160These people don't care about Medicare because they'll never have to use it. All they have to do is serve one term and they have health coverage for life. Our Servicemembers don't get as good of a health benefit as these losers do. Just remember that you too will someday need to use Medicare and there won't be any money left because all of it was cut off and the funds were diverted to the war so that Blackwater and Halliburton with their no-bid contracts can continue their outrageous profits from the war while our servicemen and women in the field do without. Yet people try to blame the Democrats for the lack of funding for the troops. Look at it again my friends. We've been swindled by the very people we elected to take care of our homeland and our citizens.
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3 comments:
This is all well and good. And without the political rhetoric, there is a very real possibility of doctors starting to drop out of Medicare because they can't afford to stay in business with it. We've watched Medicare's reimbursement drop over 20% in the last three years.
But, that aside, How did 41 senators stop this bill from passing? Either you have deliberately left out some names or something is wrong with the vote because it takes 51 to either pass or kill a bill. Now, with the 41 names, that isn't possible is it?
I must have missed the two NO votes so the vote was 58 for 40 against and 2 no votes that totals 100.. One of the people who thought this wasn't important enough is John McCain who wants to be our President. Makes you wonder if he really does care about taking care of America like he says. The other was Ted Kennedy who of course is dealing with a Brain Tumor so he can be excused.
A bill to overide cuts to Medicare passed, was vetoed, and the veto was overridden. Here's a copy of the article from the online Washington Post.
Patricia Max
Congress Easily Overrides Medicare Veto
By Michael Abramowitz and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 16, 2008; Page A02
President Bush sought to block a bill yesterday aimed at forestalling an 11 percent cut in payments to doctors taking care of Medicare patients, but Congress quickly overrode his veto.
The House voted 383 to 41 to override the veto, while the Senate voted 70 to 26, in both cases far more than the two-thirds necessary to block the president's action.
With organized medicine and other lobbies promoting the popular measure in an election year, Republicans broke heavily from the White House. A total of 153 House Republicans voted to defy the White House, 24 more than in a June 24 vote that started the momentum toward passage of the Medicare doctors' bill yesterday. Twenty-one Senate Republicans voted for the bill this time, including four senators who had voted "nay" in the two previous Medicare votes.
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The Medicare bill is the third, along with the recent farm bill and a water resources bill, to become law despite Bush's veto. Overall, Bush has vetoed 12 pieces of legislation during his presidency, including a "pocket veto" of last year's defense authorization bill.
At issue in this bill was how the government should respond to a planned reduction in Medicare doctors' fees, mandated by a formula that requires the cuts if certain spending targets are not reached. Under the formula, a 10.6 percent cut in fees for doctors was supposed to go into effect July 1, but Congress overwhelmingly voted instead to reduce the reimbursement to insurance companies that serve Medicare beneficiaries under its managed-care program. Those reductions would allow the postponement of the pay cut to doctors for 18 months, but would cost the insurers $14 billion over five years.
Bush said the cuts to insurers would harm the managed-care program, which his administration sees as giving seniors more choices and eventually leading to lower health costs for the federal government.
"I support the primary objective of this legislation, to forestall reductions in physician payments," Bush said in his veto message. "Yet taking choices away from seniors to pay physicians is wrong." He called the bill "fiscally irresponsible" and charged that it "would undermine the Medicare prescription drug program."
But Democrats said their legislation would prevent doctors from fleeing the traditional treatment practices that are used by more than 80 percent of the mostly elderly Medicare patients. They said private insurers were receiving too much funding in the Medicare Advantage program.
"I guess the president is voting with them and not with America's seniors and those with disabilities when he vetoed this bill," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
The House and Senate votes followed a large political push by the American Medical Association -- which ran ads in home states and districts of key Republicans -- and AARP, which held a lobbying campaign in which 1.2 million of its activists contacted members of Congress urging the veto override.
Health-care experts said Congress is simply moving the problem down the road, since lawmakers will be confronted within the year with the need to take additional steps or allow a major cut in physician fees.
"This is stopgap Medicare legislation," said Charles N. "Chip" Kahn III, president of the Federation of American Hospitals. "It is not confronting any of the major spending or organizational issues concerning Medicare."
Yesterday's congressional votes were not as dramatic as the maneuvering that occurred last month over the original legislation. On June 26, Senate Democrats fell one vote short of the 60 needed to pass the measure.
But last Wednesday, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) -- recuperating from brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor -- left Boston after a morning treatment of chemotherapy and radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital to return to the Senate for another Medicare vote. Once his vote assured Democrats of the 60 needed for passage, another nine Republicans switched sides, pushing the margin to a veto-proof 69 votes.
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