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By Donna Smith and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In what likely is the last big showdown between President George W. Bush and congressional Democrats over the popular Medicare health care program, the U.S. Congress on Tuesday voted to override his veto of a bill to keep doctors' payments from being slashed.
By enacting the measure over Bush's objections, Congress rescinded an 11 percent reduction in government payments to doctors treating elderly Medicare patients.
Just hours after Bush vetoed the legislation, the Senate voted 70-26 to overturn him, following the House of Representatives, which voted 383-41 to override. The bill now becomes law.
Twenty-one Republicans in the Senate and 153 in the House broke ranks with Bush and joined majority Democrats to overturn the veto in this election-year vote.
Supporters of the legislation argued that the scheduled 11 percent pay cut for doctors would discourage many of them from taking on Medicare patients.
The bill would offset the cost to the government of restoring the doctors' pay by cutting payments to big insurers, such as UnitedHealth Group Inc and Aetna Inc, which have contracts with the Medicare program.
Democrats argued that those contracts with private health care plans, which were encouraged in the 2003 legislation creating a new government drug benefit for the elderly, cost more than providing health coverage under the traditional Medicare program.
They also argued that more generous subsidies to private health plans threaten to undermine the traditional Medicare program.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...29466020080715
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In what likely is the last big showdown between President George W. Bush and congressional Democrats over the popular Medicare health care program, the U.S. Congress on Tuesday voted to override his veto of a bill to keep doctors' payments from being slashed.
By enacting the measure over Bush's objections, Congress rescinded an 11 percent reduction in government payments to doctors treating elderly Medicare patients.
Just hours after Bush vetoed the legislation, the Senate voted 70-26 to overturn him, following the House of Representatives, which voted 383-41 to override. The bill now becomes law.
Twenty-one Republicans in the Senate and 153 in the House broke ranks with Bush and joined majority Democrats to overturn the veto in this election-year vote.
Supporters of the legislation argued that the scheduled 11 percent pay cut for doctors would discourage many of them from taking on Medicare patients.
The bill would offset the cost to the government of restoring the doctors' pay by cutting payments to big insurers, such as UnitedHealth Group Inc and Aetna Inc, which have contracts with the Medicare program.
Democrats argued that those contracts with private health care plans, which were encouraged in the 2003 legislation creating a new government drug benefit for the elderly, cost more than providing health coverage under the traditional Medicare program.
They also argued that more generous subsidies to private health plans threaten to undermine the traditional Medicare program.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...29466020080715