The House Republicans are now holding a press conference attacking the CBO numbers which say that the Health Reform bill lowers the deficit. Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) didn’t reference the disputed memo but said that just this morning Speaker Pelosi said that they would do a “doc fix”. And she did seem to say that. Here’s the quote.
Q: Madam Speaker, on the Medicare question, the so-called doctor fix, can you speak to why that was not included in this legislation?
Speaker Pelosi. Well, we have been including it in legislation for a long time, because it’s not about a doctor fix, it’s about our seniors or anyone who relies upon Medicare to have access to physicians, that they be in their region and in their program.
So this is again, you call it the doctor fix, but it is really about access to health care for Americans. It’s not in this bill, but we will have it soon. And we have made a commitment to do this. This is very important.
So Camp’s right. A bit less declarative than he claimed. But he’s not making it up. So what do the Dems say? Leadership aides would never say that a doc fix definitely won’t happen. They just say the disputed memo isn’t theirs. And some will go as far as to call it a hoax.
We’ll bring you more as we get it.
