Bloomsberg.c.com announced late Tuesday that congressional leaders are "very close" to settling on a plan for extending the payroll tax deduction through 2012, without requiring an offset. The plan would also extend the "doc fix" that prevents the rollback of doctors' reimbursements under Medicare from taking place (and apparently also the unemployment benefitsm with some term less than the current 99 weeks), by requiring offsets for those costs elsewhere. The GOP plan for drug-testing unemployment benefit recipients has thankfully been tossed into file 13, and so has the requirement that such recipients work for a high school equivalency degree.
Revenues for the offset may come in part from higher pension contributions from higher-paid government employees.
According to the Bloomberg piece, Camp, chair of House Ways & Means, has said that "a structure and a framework" for a deal is in place.
I must admit I don't get the Medicare doc fix. Doctors are well paid generally, and paying them less under Medicare sounds like a good start to reducing the rentier profits that doctors make out of providing medical care. I would prefer to see a phase down of the amounts they get reimbursed--27% is a significant cut in a one-year period, so it would make more sense to phase the cut in over at least 5 years.
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