In the latest illustration that ObamaCare was hardly the last word on health care spending from Congress, the House last night passed the so called "Doc Fix," increasing Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors, by a vote of 417 to 1. The Senate had already passed it, so it will now go to the president, who is expected to sign it.
The one member who voted against it was George Miller, Democrat of California; an aide to Mr. Miller told FutureOfCapitalism.com that the Congressman was casting "a protest vote" related to a lack of 401K fee disclosure provisions in the Senate bill.
It's a testament to the lobbying power of the doctors that they get a government-issued raise while a lot of Americans don't even have jobs, let alone jobs that pay as well as doctors. The next time you see a doctor driving around in a BMW, Mercedes, Cadillac, or Lexus with MD plates, remember, he bought it with your tax dollars, and every Republican in the House of Representatives -- Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Ron Paul, all of them -- voted in favor.
An alternative position would have been for the Republicans to say to the Democrats, look, if you want to spend more money on government health care, you should have done it as part of ObamaCare rather than as a separate bill that has the effect of making the spending in ObamaCare look deceptively smaller than it actually will be. Defenders will reply that this doc fix is somehow budget neutral to the federal government.
