Washington, D.C. - Wyoming's U.S. Senators Mike Enzi and John Barrasso, both R-Wyo., are cosponsoring a bill to increase Medicare's reimbursement rates for doctors and protect patient access to the health care program.
"Doctors and other health care providers taking care of Medicare patients deserve to get paid a fair wage and those patients should be able to see their doctors when they need to. Everyone wants that and we're going to get that, but apparently not until the fear mongers have needlessly worked people up into a frenzy and shed enough blood," Enzi said. "If the special interest groups and the Senate majority leadership would spend as much time working with us on a sensible bill as they spend making political hay, this never would have been an issue, but to them that's not the point. They want an issue, not a solution."
"We will get this fixed so cuts do not happen. The bill that failed in the Senate is not a solution for rural areas like Wyoming. A better option exists that can be signed into law today. I am supporting a package which stops cuts, provides a 1.1% increase and includes the Craig Thomas Rural Health Care Package,” Barrasso said. “Despite the politics going on in Washington, I will continue to fight for the rights of our rural hospitals and rural providers.”
Enzi and Barrasso have cosponsored S. 3118, the Preserving Access to Medicare Act of 2008. It would stop a rate cut for Medicare payments to doctors that was mandated through the expiration of a current law. The cut was scheduled to go into effect today, but senators supporting the Preserving Access bill worked with the Administration to hold doctor Medicare claims for about 10 days, giving Congress more time to keep Medicare functioning as it has.
Enzi and Barrasso voted against the plan that failed the Senate last week because it would gut Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage allows millions of seniors, many in Wyoming, to use federal dollars to pay for their own health insurance, insurance that allows them to more closely manage their own health care without federal interference.
Since the vote, a national doctor association based in Chicago has launched what the senators call a smear campaign in Wyoming, spending tens of thousands of dollars on negative advertising.
"These ads have about as much credibility as the ones on late night TV telling you that you can lose weight without dieting or exercising just by taking one little miracle pill," Enzi said. "Democrats and Republicans agree on many of the goals and even many of the steps we can take to reach those goals. We are close to coming together on a plan that will work for both sides and more importantly will work for doctors and patients, but these attack ads don't help matters. The Senate majority will hopefully soon realize that it’s more important to work together on a bipartisan solution the President can sign than to play gotcha politics. People are tired of it."
The senators said the American Medical Association (AMA), which is paying for the attack ads, has flatly refused a one-month extension of the Medicare program. Last Thursday Senate majority leadership twice blocked efforts to pass a one-month extension to hold the doctors harmless so that a bipartisan solution could be written and signed.
Barrasso and Enzi urged members of the Wyoming Medical Society to contact the AMA and ask why it continues to oppose a month-long extension that would allow work on a bill so doctors wouldn't have to face a cut down the road.
