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The Senate's vote to advance the health care reform bill Sunday couldn't have been more dramatic. With the Capitol still blanketed under two feet of heavy snow, lawmakers spent the entire day engaged in intense debate, with the final vote coming at 1 a.m. It became necessary to wheel 92-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) into the snow-muffled Capitol to prevent any deadlocks based on procedural motions.

In the wee hours of the morning, 63 senators voted to end debate on a defense bill containing a 60-day delay of the sustainable growth rate (SGR) cut to Medicare reimbursements. The vote clears the way for a final Senate vote scheduled for Saturday.

You're not the only one wondering where is CMS's Comprehensive Error Rate Test (CERT) report for 2009. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) fired off a letter to HHS and CMS asking: what's the hold up?

The House Appropriations Committee tucked in a Department of Defense appropriations bill a two-month, zero percent update to the conversion factor used to calculate Medicare payments. This means the 2009 conversion factor of $36.0666 won't be subject to a 21.29% cut until March 1, 2010 -- providing a "bridge," buying federal lawmakers another 60 days, to finding a more permanent solution to a flawed Medicare payment formula.

You probably expected Congress to procrastinate in passing a legislative fix to the sustainable growth rate (SGR) cut to your Medicare payments. But a meaningful solution to the scheduled 21.29% cut to reimbursements would have been nice by now.

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