Physicians would see a 2.2% increase in Medicare payment—but only through November—under a long-stalled package of tax provisions and safety-net health spending that the Senate strained to pare back in order to gain enough votes for passage.
The revised package could come up for a vote as early as Thursday.
“We heard what the senators were saying, and we adjusted accordingly,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who shaped the House-passed package, said.
The Senate has struggled for several weeks to tailor its version of a bill that the House passed last month. In the process, though, Senate Democrats shaped a $140 billion package that would have increased the national deficit by $78.7 billion. That number worried many lawmakers, including those who have become increasingly wary of deficit spending.
The House package included a $22 billion, 19-month fix to the sustainable growth rate formula. Without it, physicians face a 21.2% pay cut that would kick in by week's end.
The changes come after Senate Democrats failed to muster the 60 votes needed to pass the original package—itself a tweaked version of the House-passed bill.
Earlier Wednesday, the package—inked by the Senate Finance Committee—failed to pass a test vote, 45-52. Ten Democrats and one independent joined all Republicans against the measure. The result wasn't entirely unexpected. Baucus and other Senate leaders on Tuesday had the scaled-back version nearly at the ready.
