Jul
10
Ted Kennedy and the Medicare vote
Filed Under Sunrise on KGMB9
The U.S. Senate has given final passage to a bill that bars any reduction of Medicare compensation, and provides for federal matching funds when states increase that compensation.
The bureaucrats who set Medicare rates have been shortchanging doctors and hospitals for years, and the gap between Medicare payments and other compensation has grown with time.
Your employer has been overpaying for your health care because HMOs and private doctors and hospitals have tapped others to make up the difference. In other cases, doctors have solved the problem by simply declining to treat Medicare payments. The law doesn’t require them to.
The bill to do something about this, to a degree, passed by a veto-proof margin Wednesday after an emotional surprise appearance by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who showed up over his doctor’s objections to cast the deciding vote.
After that, nine Republicans defected and voted with him, apparently having promised the White House they would vote with the president if and only if their votes were necessary for him to win. This is a common practice in both parties when members of Congress have to choose between their president’s wishes and those of their constituents.
The sick-man-voting scenario has played out before. One of the Reagan budgets passed after a Republican congressmen who had just had surgery showed up in his pajamas to cast a deciding vote. One of the Founding Fathers, Rodney of Delaware, was dying of cancer when he signed the Declaration of Independence.
Kennedy is a special case. It’s a little-known fact outside Washington, D.C., though perhaps a little better-known after reports on his brain tumor, but the arch-liberal senator is actually pretty well-liked among conservatives as well as liberals.
Now, about the bill. It contains millions for Hawaii hospitals, but these are federal matching funds, conditional on Hawaii government coming up with funds first. The Lingle administration has promised funds, but Hawaii Pacific Health said it also promised them in the last fiscal year and then reneged.
I think about this every time I get a press release announcing the release of funds for something else.
State tax revenue is falling behind inflation — that’s why money is tight.
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Aloha Howard : Do you think the Super Ferry will ever be allowed to sail to Kauai? With the loss of a couple cruise ships here on Maui, the added revenue the visitors who visit from Oahu on the Super Ferry is welcome by everybody. The protestors who said the Super Ferry would cause traffic problems here on Maui were proven wrong by a survey by the Department of Transportation. The Super Ferry has not caused any enviromental problems so why is Kauai still saying no to the Super Ferry? Aloha Howard.