Republicans Will Cave on Medicare Funding

The Republicans are holding up a Medicare funding plan which reduces subsidies to private insurers offering "Medicare Advantage" in order to raise doctors fees in the stand, and the AMA is taking out ads targeting the Republicans opposing this.

You see the Republicans believe that they only way to bring efficiency to the medical market is to bring in private enterprise, but private enterprise is much less efficient than basic Medicare, so they need subsidies to compete.

The reality is that the Medicare advantage program is about two things:

• Ideology trumping reality.
• Republithugs getting donations from insurance companies.

Bush is promising a veto, and doctors are already shutting down practices or no longer accepting new Medicare patients, so this will get ugly quickly.

If the Dems have any brains, they will fold their arms, and say, "this is the deal", and let the Republicans founder.