Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
MEDICARE IMPROVEMENTS FOR PATIENTS AND PROVIDERS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - July 09, 2008)
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Mr. MARTINEZ. Madam President, this is indeed an important debate we are having about a very important issue to many in my State of Florida. There is no doubt that my State has a large population of people who depend on Medicare for their health care. This is an important matter to them.
We also have, of course, the doctors who deliver health care who also have a concern, a great concern, about a potential cut at a time when everything else in their lives is rising--an unfair cut. The fact is, we know doctors are tremendously stressed today because of many issues in their practice.
The fact is that hard-working doctors do not deserve a pay cut. I know whoever created this condition years ago was well-intentioned, but it has not worked and it does not work. Doctors should not be expected to come before the Congress hat in hand each and every year or 18 months to ask for yet another extension or a deferral of a pay cut. The next cut in pay, which would come 18 months from when we do the right thing and move beyond the politics and get something done, will be a 20-percent cut--unsustainable.
I would say the real answer for the long term is to fix Medicare and to fix the doctors' pay problem. Unfortunately, we have not been able to come to an agreement. I daresay I don't believe we will today either. So I believe the real answer to the issue is to extend the program temporarily. We have not done so in the past, even though it has been requested. I wonder why.
The fact is that to date, the Congress has passed 28 temporary extensions for programs where agreement has yet to be reached so these programs can continue without interruption during the time those differences are ironed out. These extensions are commonplace, as demonstrated by the 28 temporary extensions during this Congress alone. In fact, at the time the majority objected to the first request for a short-term extension, Medicare payment rates were already operating under a 10-month temporary extension from last December.
So I would say it is time for us to stop the political ``gotcha'' games and allow the doctors to be assured that they will not be suffering a pay cut while we get to a bipartisan agreement because it is important that this be a bipartisan effort and that we come at it in a bipartisan way with ideas from both sides of the aisle. We can do that. While that takes place, I believe the only way to proceed would be for there to be a 30-day extension that can allow uninterrupted payments to continue. The differences can be worked out, as they always are in this environment, although not always on a timely basis, and then we can move forward.
UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST
At this time, I ask unanimous consent that if cloture is not invoked on the motion to proceed to the House-passed bill, the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of a Senate bill which I will send to the desk, and it is clean, a 1-month extension of the Medicare payments bill. I further ask unanimous consent that there be 15 minutes of debate equally divided and that following the use or yielding back of time, the bill be read a third time and the Senate proceed to a vote on passage without any intervening action or debate.
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