Not surprisingly, the insurance industry’s million dollar ad and lobbying campaign is paying off on Capitol Hill and it appears a Congressional compromise to re-authorize SCHIP won’t include needed reforms to Medicare.
Congress Daily summarizes the closed-door negotiations and Speaker Pelosi’s comments afterwards:
House Speaker Pelosi said “We are working on agreements between [the] House and Senate to take two proposals to our respective caucuses in order to see where we go from here." House leadership sources speculated she was referring to breaking the House measure into separate Medicare and SCHIP bills to avoid confronting the Senate with the House Medicare funding language, which Senate negotiators have called a poison pill.
Of course, the President promises a veto of anything other than his proposal anyway so that’s no small part of the political calculations here.
Both the Medicare overpayments to private plans and the doctor’s fix appear destined for “to be determined later” status. The Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review’s latest posts on this can be found here and here.
No comments:
Post a Comment