Congress Overrides Bush Veto of Medicare Bill

But just hours later, the House (on a vote of 383–41) and the Senate (on a 70-26 vote) overrode Bush’s veto. Passage of the bill stops the Bush administration’s proposed cuts in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients.

If those cuts had gone into effect, as many as 60 percent of physicians would have been forced to stop treating new Medicare patients and been forced to drop others from their rolls, according to an American Medical Association.

After Bush vetoed the bill, George Kourpias, president of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said the veto

would prompt an exodus of physicians from treating Medicare patients and make it even harder for low-income seniors to afford their medical care—all in the name of preserving the excessive taxpayer subsidies to the Medicare Advantage programs run by large insurance companies.

Bush vetoed the bill because it would cut payments to the insurance companies in his Medicare-privatization experiment, Medicare Advantage. But those private insurers are paid, on average, 13 percent more than it costs the government to provide benefits directly under Medicare. Under the current payment formula, the big insurers were estimated to pocket $150 billion over the next 10 years. Says Kourpias: