SCHIP, Medicare Physician Fee Cuts, and Medicare Advantage--We're Getting Down to Crunch Time

Since September of 2006, I have been pointing to this year-end as the time that would require some big budget decisions impacting SCHIP, the scheduled 10% Medicare physician fee cut, and corresponding Medicare Advantage cuts to health plans to pay for the doc fix.Guess what? New Year's is just over six weeks away.For now, each of these issues is bogged down in the overall budget stalemate between