Republicans have been making much of the Doc Fix Bill as of late. They claim it should be added into the Democratic heatlhcare reform bill. And claim that the costs of healthcare reform are understated because it does not include Doc Fix legislation. So just what is Doc Fix? As it so happens, Doc Fix is a bill that keeps physican reimbursements higher than what they would be required be to under a the 90's pay as you go bill. This Doc Fix legislation has been passed by congress each year with a year only extension. Now physicans groups want a permanent fix. So they won't have to go through this annual exercise. These extensions allow the physicans to forego a 21 percent reduction in reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid services. So the bottom line is that a permanent fix will cost 200 billion dollars. The Doc Fix issue is a Medicare maintenance issue and has nothing to do with healthcare reform. It is and existing cost that would have been incurred with or without healthcare reform. So it would have been unfair to throw it into the CBO numbers on healthcare reform. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32335.html
