Congress wants to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare, but it also might trim a benefit that could cost seniors billions of dollars.
Buried deep inside the hundreds of pages of the Senate's Medicare bill is a provision requiring Medicare patients to pay 20 percent of the costs of their clinical lab work, such as blood tests and urinalysis. Seniors would have to start paying in January.
Some physicians predicted many of their patients would be unable to pay the new fees and wouldn't get the tests they need. For more information on the Medicare bill go to http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/article/1617-7754.html.