Political Quotes

“I rise this morning, prior to our break for the Fourth of July holiday, to talk about Medicare and in particular some of the activity on the floor in the last couple of weeks, but especially last night. I wanted to highlight some of the provisions of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 because sometimes, when something gets voted on here, whether it is the bill or a measure to get us to the bill, it can go right by a lot of us and certainly can go right by the American people without enough focus on some of the provisions of the bill and some of the detail. I think it was a real missed opportunity, and I will talk about that in a moment, but now just some of the highlights. First of all, with regard to physicians in America, the bill eliminates the pending 10-percent cut in Medicare payments to physicians for the remainder of 2008 and provides a 1.1-percent update in Medicare physician payments for 2009. It provides a 2-percent quality reporting bonus for doctors who report on quality measures through 2010 and provides financial incentives to providers to encourage the use of electronic prescribing technology.”