51. The House Republican bill would gradually increase work requirements. 52. The House Republican bill would increase the basic payments that HMOs receive for providing services to Medicare beneficiaries. 53. The House Republican bill would also increase Medicare payments to doctors, hospitals, health maintenance organizations and other health care providers. 54. The House Appropriations Committee is considering a bill to increase funds for rehabilitating historic buildings in the national parks and to stabilize the deteriorating south side of Ellis Island. 55. The House bill would also increase fees for mining on federal lands. 56. The pending Senate bill would increase more than twice the amount of federal funds for teaching hospitals and lacks any plan to even out the subsidies for medical residents. 57. The revised bill would increase reimbursements to rural hospitals and strengthen fraud and abuse provisions that Democrats had attacked as weak. 58. The Senate bill would increase work requirements, but would give states more freedom to decide what counts as work. 59. The same bill also increased the amount that the administration had initially sought for so-called homeland defense, including the effort to combat bioterrorism. 60. The Senate bill increases the federal excise tax on tobacco. |