Medicare pay hike on tougher road after being stripped from SCHIP bill

Lawmakers want to pass a "clean" children's health insurance bill to maintain bipartisan Senate support for the measure.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. Oct. 8, 2007.

Washington -- Hopes that a two-year Medicare physician payment increase would head to the White House on the back of a popular children's health insurance measure were dashed late last month. Lawmakers decided to remove the Medicare language from the bill.

The House and the Senate in early August passed legislation that would reauthorize and expand the expiring State Children's Health Insurance Program. Unlike the Senate bill, the House version also included provisions that would raise Medicare physician payments by 0.5% in both 2008 and 2009 to prevent annual cuts required by law.

Physician organizations, including the American Medical Association, had hoped that negotiators crafting a compromise between the two significantly different measures would preserve the Medicare language in their final bill. But lawmakers decided to take a different path.

"As part of the compromise between the Senate and the House, House leaders have agreed to put aside Medicare for the time being so we can focus on getting health insurance to children," said Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), the Finance Committee's top Republican.

The upper chamber's original legislation passed by a bipartisan vote of 68-31, while the House bill passed by a largely party-line vote of 225-204. Negotiators decided to drop the Medicare provisions from the SCHIP bill when Senate Republicans threatened to withdraw support if they did not.

The GOP opposition was not based on the physician payment increase, but on a source of its funding -- elimination of federal subsidies to Medicare private plans.