Robert Knight

A funny thing happened on the way to one of the biggest scam attempts in history. It got ratted out. And Capitol Hill got an earful.

So the U.S. Senate failed by seven votes to invoke cloture on Wednesday and push forward a bill that even had Washington Post editorialists gagging on its duplicity. Thirteen Democrats joined all 40 Republicans to reject 47-53 a free-standing Medicare bill, S. 1776, that would have pushed up the national deficit by a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next 10 years.

The reason it’s a scam is that by separating it from the proposed $856 billion Baucus health care bill, Obama could claim that he was keeping his promise not to sign any health care reform that “adds one dime to the federal deficit.” Sure, just carve it out, pretend it has nothing to do with health care, and dump it on the taxpayers. That’s what passes for “transparency.” It’s right up there with voting on a bill that hasn’t even been written yet, which is what two Senate committees have already done.

To facilitate the latest fraud, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) introduced the “Medicare Physician Fairness Act of 2009.” Each year, federal budgeters make a “doc fix,” in which they restore scheduled annual Medicare payment cuts to doctors if costs rise too high, which they always do. In January, the docs’ Medicare reimbursements are slated to drop by 21.5 percent, and 40 percent over the next five years. Some doctors have stopped taking Medicare patients, and more would do so if no adjustment is made.

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