Democrats Move to Assure Doctors, Unions on Health-Care Plan

[WriteDown]

Source: Bloomberg

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate are moving to shore up support from two of their most important constituencies, labor unions and doctors, as the lawmakers seek to craft compromise health-care legislation.

Senators said they plan to ease a proposed tax on high-end insurance plans after unions protested that it would hurt too many workers. Lawmakers may also shield doctors from the threat of cuts in payments from the Medicare program for the elderly.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are both working to combine different versions of legislation designed to curb medical costs and increase insurance coverage. The criticism from unions, the Democrats’ biggest financial backers, has them worried.

“We have to be careful,” Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, told reporters yesterday. “We don’t want to see our friends in labor not supporting it.”

Lawmakers are also wooing doctors, whose American Medical Association trade group has backed the overhaul so far.

Reid put legislation to avert a 21 percent drop in Medicare reimbursements of doctors in January on a fast track. The measure proposed by Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow would repeal the reimbursement system, which was designed to save money on Medicare by ratcheting down payments to doctors.....


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20091015/pl_bloomberg/akolur9jkd3u

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As usual it's about making sure that doctors do not do with a penny less.

[msongs]

1. lol congress has already paid its pimps, the health scare corporations nt