Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush signed into law legislation that increases Medicare and Medicaid payments to doctors and extends a U.S. children's health program.
The law funds a 0.5 percent payment increase for six months to doctors who treat patients under the government's Medicare and Medicaid plans, which provide health care to the elderly, disabled and poor. The legislation also maintains current funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program until March 31, 2009.
Bush twice vetoed bills to increase SCHIP funding and boost enrollment to 10 million from about 6 million because he objected to moving more children into a government program rather than into private health insurance. Democrats, who control Congress, had sought to boost the program's budget over five years by about $35 billion to $60 billion.
The president proposes enabling some of the 47 million people in the U.S. without health-care insurance to get coverage by creating a deduction for taxpayers who buy health insurance in the private markets. The proposal, made in his State of the Union speech in January, hasn't gotten any traction in Congress.
The measure signed today is the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007.
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