Hot Air falsely claims health care bill doesn't reduce deficit because it excluded “doctor fix”

From a March 30 Hot Air post:

Democrats pushed the CBO to score their ObamaCare plan without considering a parallel effort called a “doctor fix” that would rescind already-scheduled cuts in Medicare reimbursements to providers. The CBO wound up scoring the bill both ways, thanks to a request by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and confirmed that the removal of the 21% cuts in reimbursements would make ObamaCare a deficit expander, running hundreds of billions of dollars in the red.

[...]

Instead of recalibrating the bill using honest accounting, they claimed deficit reductions that only exist without the doctor fix. For months, Democrats kept the rescission parallel to the overhaul of the health-care system to maintain the illusion of fiscal responsibility.

Fact: “Doctor fix” is separate issue that will need to be resolved irrespective of health care reform

Klein: Doc fix will need to be resolved “irrespective of health-care reform's fate” and "[a]ttempts to lash the two together are nonsensical." The Washington Post's Ezra Klein explained that the so-called “doc fix” is a remedy to faulty legislation that will need to be passed irrespective of health care reform. From Klein's explanation:

For a longer explanation of this issue, head to this post. The short version: In 1997, Republicans passed the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate into law. The provision created a simple equation meant to hold down Medicare costs and cut doctor payments when they rose. But the provision was passed when Medicare's costs were uncommonly low. Suddenly, SGR was forcing huge cuts rather than the modest adjustments that had been intended. So legislators began voting to delay implementation rather than cut doctor payments.

The first delay was passed in 2003, under Republicans. Then again in 2005, also under Republicans. Then in 2006, under Republicans. Then in 2007 and 2008, under Democrats. For those keeping count at home, this is a policy in a Republican bill that Republicans delayed three times and Democrats delayed twice. What's needed is to reform the system so we stop delaying it. And we will need to do that -- and this is important -- whether or not health-care reform passes.

Klein further stated that the problem necessitating the fix “predates health-care reform and exists irrespective of health-care reform's fate. Attempts to lash the two together are nonsensical.”

NY Times: “Doc fix long predates” reform and criticism is “pretty flimsy.” The Times' David Leonhardt described criticisms of the “so-called doc fix” as “pretty flimsy,” explaining that the fix would rectify an “accounting fiction” resulting from the 1990s legislation that has been repeatedly overridden since 2003. He wrote:

The current health care bills don't fix this problem. An early version of them tried to, which has led some people to suggest that the doc fix is a creation of this health reform effort. But it isn't. The doc fix long predates it. For reform to reduce the deficit relative to the status quo, it doesn't need to undo the doc fix -- any more than it needs to, say, cure cancer in order to improve the nation's health. The bill simply needs to improve the status quo.