Senate Committee to Vote on Health Bill Next Week
October 2, 2009
The Senate Finance Committee this week completed its grueling review
of nearly 600 amendments to its health reform legislation. Its leaders
hope to vote on the complete bill next week.
During its deliberations this week, the committee rejected two
separate proposals to include a public health plan option. It also
exempted 2 million more people from the individual mandate based on
economic hardship, and reduced penalties for failing to comply with the
mandate.
Thanks to the work of Sen. John Kerry and his staff, the committee
also favorably modified a proposal that would have penalized patients
and physicians in high-cost Medicare states like Massachusetts. The
current version of the bill sends more Medicare funds to low-spending
states, but doesn’t do so at the expense of high-spending states,
as the original bill would have done. The bill also calls for a
comprehensive study of regional practice expenses that takes into
account office rents, staff wages, and other costs that are out of the
physician’s control - which the original bill failed to do.
On the negative side for Massachusetts physicians, the bill still
includes a seriously flawed approach to public reporting of individual
physician performance, as well as a provision to create physician
payment penalties based on episode groupers, the flawed methodology that
is the foundation of the unfair physician tiering program of the
Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission.
Unfortunately, the bill also keeps the flawed Medicare physician
payment formula intact. The proposed Independent Medicare Advisory
Commission survived the committee markup, too. The
MMS wrote the Senate Finance Committee last week with our strong
criticisms of these and other provisions.
Following the committee’s final vote, Senate Majority Leader
Harry M. Reid will reconcile this bill with the measure developed by the
Health Education and Labor and Pensions Committee, which was chaired by
the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. The merged measure will then go to the
Senate floor for debate and a vote.
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