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This week the Senate is considering its next payoff to a powerful lobbying group—a $247 billion package for the American Medical Association. The funding is not offset and would dramatically increase the deficit. Harry Reid is betting that the bill will prove politically impossible for most Senators, including Republicans, to oppose as it addresses the number one priority for most doctors over the years—the fact that Medicare doesn’t reimburse them enough. By considering the “doc fix” apart from overall healthcare reform, he and Max Baucus remove a major cost to that package. As Senator McConnell said, “This is so transparent. They’re taking this issue out of health care, suggesting that we spend a quarter of a trillion dollars, not pay for it, so that they can then argue, the very next week potentially, that this trillion-dollar health care bill is paid for.”
Read the entire story here.
Update: Harry Reid just ran to the Senate floor and cried that he cannot get enough votes to pass the doctors’ bribe to support Obamacare. He blamed the AMA for misleading him.
