WASHINGTON — An extraordinary bipartisan accord between House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is letting both parties exhale as they move toward ending the nagging annual threat of Medicare cuts to physicians. Yet each side is bragging about far more than that.
For Boehner, R-Ohio, the package announced Tuesday lets him claim a rare if modest bipartisan pact to strengthen the finances of the costly Medicare health care program for seniors.
“We have no intentions of passing any kind of a short-term doc fix,” Boehner said, using Washington’s nickname for the Medicare doctors’ measure in a warning to the Senate, where the measure’s fate is uncertain. “We’ve got a good product. We’re going to pass it here on Thursday, and I hope the Senate will move as quickly as possible.”
The plan’s fate is less certain in the Senate.
The main thrust of the overall measure would prevent a scheduled April 1 cut of 21 percent in reimbursements for doctors treating Medicare patients. A 1997 budget law pegged physician Medicare payments to overall economic growth, threatening repeated, deep cuts that Congress has blocked temporarily 17 times since 2003.
Pelosi, D-Calif., was focused more on the extra money the plan contains for health care programs for children and low-income people.
