Will bipartisan agreement on the need for a permanent fix to the Medicare payment formula eventually lead to an actual bipartisan agreement? For years there has been bipartisan agreement that the current payment formula is flawed, but there has been no bipartisan solution to fix it.
Republicans and Democrats said they needed to work together on a permanent fix while debating the merits of the one-year doc fix bill Thursday morning. "We need to put aside partisan politics and in the upcoming year, sit down and come up with a new formula to fix permanently how we pay our physicians," Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) later agreed, saying "we need to work together to achieve a permanent fix in the next Congress."
Needing to work together and actually working together are two different things, but the House later came together and voted 409-2 to pass the temporary pay fix bill.
President Barack Obama says he will sign the pay fix and that he supports working on a bipartisan solution to permanently fixing the Medicare formula. "For too long, we have confronted this reoccurring problem with temporary fixes and stop-gap measures," the president said in a statement. "It's time for a permanent solution that seniors and their doctors can depend on and I look forward to working with Congress to address this matter once and for all in the coming year."