“The American Medical Association (AMA) today announced support for concurrent passage of H.R. 3962 and H.R. 3961, U.S. House of Representatives health system reform bills."I would suggest the operative word is "concurrent."
HR 3962 is the big House health care bill. HR 3961 is the standalone bill that would spend $210 billion (latest CBO score for the bill) to cancel the Sustainable Growth Rate Formula cuts and pays for it by adding the full cost to the deficit. That proposal failed in the Senate a few weeks ago when only 47 Democrats supported it.
In short, the AMA is saying we’ll support the House bill but it is going to cost $210 billion in additional federal debt to get our vote.
At least they know exactly what they want!
What will be really interesting is to see where the AMA stands on the Democratic health care bills when they finally figure out there isn't another $210 billion in the bag for them.
What's worse? That the AMA would so blatantly put a $210 billion price tag on their support or that they are gullible enough to be played by a Democratic leadership that only had 47 votes on the Senate floor two weeks ago for the very same thing?