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"For more than two decades, internist Lee Antles has treated Medicare patients at his practice in Olympia, Wash. Last month, he started turning them away.
What pushed him over the edge was Congress's failure to end the looming threat—which no one expects to be carried through—of a 21% payment cut for doctors who participate in the seniors' insurance program. Last year, he and his wife, Margie, who manages the office, took home $55,000 before taxes.
Dr. Antles is considering quitting medicine and moving to Chicago, so his wife can return to a sales job that pays at least twice that much. "It just causes me such angst," he said. "It leaves 1,000 Medicare patients. Where do they go?"
The Senate could vote as soon as Wednesday to end debate on a bill to delay the cuts. But lawmakers are considering postponing them just through the year's end. A House bill that passed last month would delay the cuts through the end of 2011.
Repeated short-term fixes of the problem in recent years have left doctors frustrated and some, like Dr. Antles, are refusing to take new Medicare patients....
