Legal Commentary

Doc Fixes And Donut Holes

By Big Tent Democrat

The GOP has argued that because of the doc fix, the health bill costs more than Dems say. Krugman responded:

First of all, says the analysis, the true cost of reform includes the cost of the “doc fix.” What’s that? Well, in 1997 Congress enacted a formula to determine Medicare payments to physicians. [. . .] Instead of changing the formula, however, Congress has consistently enacted one-year fixes. And Republicans claim that the estimated cost of future fixes, $208 billion over the next 10 years, should be considered a cost of health care reform. But the same spending would still be necessary if we were to undo reform.

Today, Ezra Klein touts the idea that the fix of the donut hole in the Medicare prescription drug benefit was how 4 million people benefit from the health bill. But isn't this basically the other side of the coin Krugman is condemning? The fix of the donut hole was hardly the point of the bill (and certainly not what the GOP is objecting to) and could have been done without "reform," just as the "doc fix" is not really part of the health bill either. More . . .

Remember the 787 billion dollar stimulus bill? And how over 70 billion dollars of it was merely the yearly extension of the AMT adjustment? The counting of doc fixes and donut hole patching is more of the same.

Maybe the wonk gap is not as big as Krugman thinks.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 19, 2011 (boomark / email).