The Congress went on the 4th of July vacation without being able to pass the bill that would have prevented a 10.6 percent cut in doctors’ wages and which would have cut the subsidies the government makes to private insurers.

If the bill would have passed, it would have facilitated senior citizens’ access to medical care, because the doctors would have been more likely to accept such patients, and because they would have had to pay lesser fees to insurance companies to get the medical services they would need.

What is more, the Medicare bill would have put more focus on preventive medicine, which is an issue that some people consider to be a problem of the American healthcare system.

During the last years, Congress had to pass a bill that would have prevented wage cuts for doctors, and has managed to do so every time until now. The House managed to pass the Medicare bill voting 152-59 for it.

President Bush was one of the persons that put pressure on Congress to reject the bill by saying that he would veto against it if it would have passed. This was one of the Republicans’ excuses to motivate their votes against it.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans rushed to accuse each other on the matter, starting a war of declarations.

The Republicans said that they would have voted for the bill provided they had some opportunity to modify it. The wage cut for the doctors will be effective starting with July 15.