The first draft of ObamaCare included a $250 billion increase in payments to doctors who treat Medicare payments, the so-called “doc fix.” It’s intended to fix the fact that current law includes substantial cuts in reimbursements to doctors, so large increases are needed just to keep reimbursement levels constant. Democrats removed the doc fix funding from later versions of ObamaCare because it added so much to the price tag as to be politically unpalatable. But this was just a gimmick, because the intention was always just to spend the doc fix billions and break the budget after ObamaCare was the law of the land.
June 25th, 2010
