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Fight Over Medicare Cuts Plays Into Larger Debate
WASHINGTON -- Senators battled Tuesday over legislation to forestall a cut in Medicare payments to doctors, trying to seize the advantage in the larger health debate.

Medicare's reimbursement schedule calls for a 21% drop in payments to doctors beginning in January. Top Democrats are proposing to upend that arrangement and instead freeze doctor payments at this year's level for the next decade. They seek to do so in a bill -- separate from the overhaul legislation -- that they said would shore up the government health program for the elderly.

Republicans and some Democrats questioned the price of the Medicare measure -- $247 billion over 10 years -- and said proponents haven't offered any new revenue sources or spending cuts to offset the cost.

The Senate's No. 2 Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, complained that the change in doctor payments was being taken out of the broader bill -- which President Barack Obama has promised won't raise the federal budget deficit -- and moved as a freestanding measure. "I see it as a transparent attempt to take the deficit off the table," he said.

Supporters of the bill say the sharp payment cuts, unless reversed, would encourage doctors to stop seeing Medicare patients....