US Congress overrides Medicare veto

The US Congress has voted to override President George W Bush's veto of the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (HR 6331) in an unusual move. In order to do this, both the House of Representatives, with 383 votes to 41, and the Senate, 70 to 26, approved the blocked legislation by over two-thirds. A 10.6% cut in physician reimbursements under the Medicare program has now been scrapped, but a year-on-year expansion of end-stage renal disease care has been provided for under the HR 6331 Act.

According to analysts at Lehman Brothers, the switch to a bundled payment system and an annual update on dialysis service reimbursement is likely to benefit the manufacturers of related medical devices. However, Lehman's Ed Ridley-Day also noted that erythropoiesis-stimulating agents such as erythropoietin will be included in the federal program's expansion.