SENATE COMPROMISE GOES TOO FAR IN IT'S STATUTORY REGULATION THAT MEDICARE PHYSICIANS MAY NOT REFER MEDICARE BENEFICIARIES TO MEDICAL FACILITIES...

... IN WHICH THE PHYSICIANS THEMSELVES HAVE FINANCIAL INTERESTS.

Such a regulation can only interfere with and limit care options available to Medicare Beneficiaries, and does so based on a paranoid, pernicious, cynical perspective that physicians are entirely self-interested, don't care about their patients, deliberately abuse their patients financially, may abuse their patients mentally and physically, and deliberately abuse the Medicare System.

If anything, it is the Medicare System that abuses physicians; it's pro-rated pay rates to physicians are excessively low. It must be remembered that physicians participate voluntarily in the Medicare Program. Reimbursement rates are so low that without question the majority of physicians participate, because they care and only because they care! There are always a few fraudsters, whose practices make national headlines and disgrace the medical profession. This is true in every profession -- even in politics....

The Senate should drop this pernicious statutory regulation before the Tuesday morning vote. The Supreme Court should draft a voluntary advisement to the Senate today to this effect, stating that inevitably such a statute will find it's way before the Supreme Court, where it will inevitably be found unconstitutional.