Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. House approved spending $210 billion over 10 years to prevent reductions in federal reimbursements to doctors participating in the Medicare program.

The chamber voted 243-183 yesterday to overhaul a 1997 budget mechanism intended to control payments to doctors under Medicare, the government’s health plan for the elderly and disabled. The measure, which still needs Senate approval to take effect, would create a new formula that would boost doctors’ payments by 1.2 percent next year instead of the 21 percent reduction now scheduled to take effect.

The current formula is too low and “would bring about havoc in the Medicare program,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat. “We can solve this problem permanently or we can enact another one- year Band-aid; this legislation says that we will finally enact lasting reform.”

The Obama administration has endorsed the plan. In a statement last night, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called the measure “an important step forward.”

House Majority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said the bill has “no chance” of becoming law, noting that the Senate blocked a similar proposal last month.

In the Senate, 12 Democrats joined Republicans in voting to thwart consideration of the measure, which opponents said would increase the government’s $1.4 trillion budget deficit.

House Republicans have said the measure should have been considered as part of the health-care overhaul plan approved by the House on Nov. 7. They accuse Democrats of dealing with the Medicare reimbursement separately to keep it from adding to the overhaul’s cost.

Federal Deficit

President Barack Obama, who has made a health-care overhaul his top domestic priority, has said he won’t sign any plan that adds to the federal deficit.

While the House health-care plan is estimated to cut the deficit by $109 billion over the next 10 years, combining it with the Medicare payment change would raise the deficit by $89 billion over 10 years, said a letter released yesterday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“They’re trying to pass this health-care bill and suggest that it doesn’t cost anything,” said Representative Paul Ryan, the top Republican on the Budget Committee. “It breaks the president’s pledge” that health-care reform won’t add a dime to the deficit, Ryan said. “It adds more than many dimes to the deficit.”

‘Separate Bill’

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said the Medicare payment measure “is a separate bill that we’ve done on a regular basis.”

“It is not part of health-care reform,” Hoyer said. “It is part of health care, but it’s not health-care reform.”

Doctors say they are already underpaid by Medicare, and many refuse to see those patients as a result.

The reimbursement legislation is a priority for the American Medical Association, the trade association representing doctors, whose endorsement earlier this month of the House Democrats’ health-care overhaul plan was a boost for Obama.

“This is nothing more than a repayment to the AMA for endorsing the larger health-care bill,” said Representative Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Asked whether its endorsement depends on Congress changing the doctor-reimbursement formula, the association said in a statement yesterday, “AMA is committed to health reform and supports both the overall House health reform and its companion bill that repeals the Medicare physician payment formula.”

Automatic Payment Cuts

At issue is a mechanism, created by former President Bill Clinton’s 1997 balanced-budget plan, to control Medicare spending by automatically cutting payments to doctors if costs exceeded predetermined levels. Lawmakers allowed payment cuts to take place just once, in 2002.

Since then, lawmakers have intervened each year to boost payment rates in an effort to prevent doctors from leaving the program. As a result, the scheduled cuts have accumulated so that unless Congress acts, payments would be cut next year by 21 percent.

The bill is H.R. 3961.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Faler in Washington at bfaler@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 20, 2009 00:01 EST