The Associated Press is reporting that a group of Senate Democrats intend to slide a fast one by the American taxpayer.  The Senators hope to win quick approval of a bill that will boost Medicare payments to doctors by hundreds of billions of dollars and will try to do so by using a legislative ploy that all but eliminates public discussion over the issue. The significance of this tactic is that the Baucus Health Reform bill was drafted with the provision that there would be cuts to Medicare payments to doctors. That is a primary reason that the Congressional Budget Office found that the bill would reduce the deficit. Of course, there were other reasons to consider carefully the assumptions that the CBO used to give the Baucus Bill a pass, but the cuts in payments should always be suspect since Congressmen routinely include this promise in bills to meet budget constraints and later cut that provision after the bill passes and public scrutiny and opposition dies down.The fact that...(Read Full Post)