March 24, 2010 5:09 p.m.

Senators are expected to vote late today on my amendment to the health care reconciliation bill to apply the health care reforms enacted yesterday to leadership and committee staff in Congress and to the President, Vice President, the President’s cabinet and White House staff.  All of these political leaders and public officials remain untouched by the reforms that have taken effect for the rest of the country.  If my amendment isn’t passed, then President Obama will not live under the Obama health care reforms, and neither will the congressional staff who were most responsible for helping to write the overhaul.  That sends a message to the people at the grassroots is that the health reforms are good enough for you, but not for us.

This pending amendment follows my efforts last year to make sure there wasn’t a double standard and that the public officials who pass the laws and work hard to get laws changed experience the law themselves.  The new health care law requires members of Congress and their personal office staffs to get their health insurance through the new exchange because of an amendment I got adopted last September by the Finance Committee.  The principle is one I’ve fought for going back two decades, when I first offered legislation to apply civil rights, labor and employment laws to Congress for the first time.

Click here to read my news release.

Click here to see the Senate floor debate last night.

Click here to read the story in today’s Politco.

Click here to read the story in today’s Roll Call newspaper.

Click here to read the editorial in today’s Washington Times.

Click here to read the story in today’s New York Post.

Click here to read the editorial in today’s New York Post.

On the Senate floor, I’m also fighting for my amendment to the health care reconciliation bill to secure specific changes to the way Medicare calculates payments to physicians and unfairly penalizes rural doctors, making it increasingly difficult for Medicare beneficiaries in rural states to find a doctor.

There are two issues behind my effort.  First, the reconciliation bill from the House is accompanied by a letter from the Secretary of Health and Human Services committing to a new study on geographic disparity.  I don’t want to risk the fix that I got in the health care reforms signed into law yesterday, and the new data that could emerge from this study could be hurtful to rural reimbursement rates.  It’s uncertain.  And, the study is connected to a Board that is supposed to cut Medicare spending, which is unlikely to result in improvements for rural areas.  Second, one of the special deals in the health reform that became law yesterday gives extra payments to five selected frontier states.  They’ll get more money at the expense of every other state, and the fact that they’re getting a better deal under the new law will make it harder to build support for changes to help rural states everywhere.  My amendment is driven by fairness and would take some of the savings from repealing the special deal for frontier states and use it to improve rural payments in all states during the two-year transition to accurate data this year and next.

I hope senators don’t let politics get in the way of making sure these important policies are established in a way that is equitable and fair. These formulas determine how well Medicare works, or doesn’t work, for beneficiaries in rural states.

Click here to read my news release.