The House approved a bill to kill Medicare's Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, HR 3961, by a 243-183 vote.
The main question now is what's next? It's headed to the Senate, where a similar SGR bill failed get enough votes last month. The Senate might not act on the House bill and just let it die.
However, not all would be lost. The Senate's health care reform bill has a temporary "doc fix" patch (see section 3101). It's the kick-the-can-down-the-road approach: a 0.5% update to Medicare payments in 2010. But it's also a fix at least 60 Senators can stomach. As for the rest of the health care reform bill, well ...