MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2010


KLMNO


EZ SU THE FED PAGE


HIGH COURT Robert Barnes


In emotionally charged times, calls arise for impeachment of a justice or two


judgment from an angry electorate. So perhaps members of the Supreme Court should not be surprised that they are in somebody’s sights, as well. Justices, of course, can’t be


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voted out. They serve for life, or as the Constitution puts it, “shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.” But that hasn’t stopped calls


from the left and the right recently for theHouse to open impeachment hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. None of the complaints is


gaining traction, but they do seem to indicate a desire to do something about the court’s rulings or recent developments that some say violate testimony given at justices’ confirmation hearings. “These are sulphurous times,”


said DennisHutchinson, a Supreme Court scholar at the University of Chicago lawschool. “And the only stick you can wave at a federal judge is impeachment.” He quickly noted that such demands almost never get very far.


The only justice ever served


with impeachment was Samuel Chase, accused in 1805 of being overtly partisan.He was cleared by the Senate and served another six years. Those old enough will remember “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards that sprouted across the South after the court’s desegregation rulings in the 1950s. And there were two impeachment attempts against Justice WilliamO. Douglas: one for granting a brief stay of execution in the Rosenberg spy case and another for alleged financial improprieties. Gerald R. Ford, then the


House minority leader, led the latter, and theHouse Judiciary Committee held hearings in


HEALTHCARE Physicians face painful decision on Medicare BY ANDREW VILLEGAS


ANDMARY AGNES CAREY While most people are focused


onthemidtermelectionsTuesday, the American Medical Associa- tion is gearing up for the lame- duckcongressional session sched- uled to start Nov. 15. Unless Con- gressintervenes,paymentstodoc- torsfortreatingMedicarepatients will be cut by 23 percent on Dec. 1 and another 6.5 percent on Jan. 1. Cecil B. Wilson, an internist


from Winter Park, Fla., who be- came AMA president in June, is pressing fora13-monthpatchthat would prevent theMedicare phy- sician cuts. In April, the Congres- sional Budget Office said that blocking the cuts until January 2012 would cost about $15 billion. A long-term formula fix, through 2020, would cost about $276 bil- lion, it said. The AMA argues that a 13-


month reprieve from the reduc- tions would give it time to work with Congress to overhaul the Medicare payment formula. In re- cent years, the payment formula has called for cuts, but each time lawmakers have stepped in to block them before they took effect or shortly afterward. The AMA could use a win on the issue. The organization was sharply criti- cized by some physicians for en- dorsing the new health-care law without getting the formula straightened out in return. If Congress doesn’t block the


looming payment cuts, “this will be a catastrophe,” Wilson said, with more and more doctors leav- ing the program and seniors hav- ing a harder time getting in to see doctors. Whatever happens in the lame-


duck session, the newCongress is likely to have more doctors. There are 16 physicians in Congress, but dozens more are running for the


House or Senate this year. That might provide more sympathy for theAMAon the issue, but the cost of fixing the formula may still be viewedas prohibitive. Editedexcerptsoftheinterview with Wilson follow.


Q:What’s your strategy in the lame-duck session to get the Medicare physician payment cuts canceled? A: Our strategy is to say to Congress, “Whatwe want from you is to stabilizeMedicare payments to physicians for the next 13 months to get us through 2011.”Andthen that will give us an opportunity working with the newCongress to develop a means of getting rid of the formula, putting in a formula or a payment mechanism that recognizes increased costs of care.


Q: But isn’t it highly unlikely


that’s going to happen?What if Congress goes for a shorter- term fix or doesn’t address the payment reduction at all? A:There is no disagreement in Congress this formula is not working. . . . Whatwe’re saying to them and whatwe want seniors to say to them is, “You’re threatening our access to care. If physicians cannot keep their doors open becauseMedicare nowonly pays about half the direct cost of running a practice, thenwe’re going to lose access to care.” It will be gut-wrenching for physicians to say, “I can no longer continue to see newMedicare patients.” . . . But that’s wherewe are, and if you’re talking about a 30 percent cut if Congress does nothing by Jan. 1, this will be a catastrophe.


Q: TheAMAhas an item on its


Web site helping physicians think through this very issue— should you stay in Medicare or


not?Do you think that if you don’t get a 13-month fix, doctors will simply say, “I’mout of this program?” A:As amatter of fact, I


participated in a webinar [recently] inD.C. Four hundred physicians across the country were involved in the webinar, in whichwetalked to them about their options.The reality is betweennowand the end of December physicians have to make a decision about their status related toMedicare. Sowe are trying to provide information to [them] so they canmake a wise decision. Our concern, of course, is that if Congress in the lame- duck session does not address this problem, or they address it in ways that are disruptive to physicians’ practices, more physicians are going to say, “You know, I’mjust out of here. I cannot keepmy doors open and provide care for other patients.”


Q: But your efforts so far


haven’tworked, and nowwe’re in a very severe fiscal situation. Maybe theAMAdoesn’t have the clout it used to have inCon- gress? A:Well, this is not about the


AMA;this is about senior citizens whoneed care. I can just tell you frommyown[experience in] Winter Park, Fla., the conversation in the grocery store lines [or] at the shopping mart is, “Do youknowany physicianwho is still taking newMedicare patients?”Andthe answer is no. —Kaiser Health News


Kaiser Health News (www.kaiserhealthnews.org) is an editorially independent news service of theKaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy organization that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.


LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS


The fact that Supreme Court justices hold their jobs for life and can’t be voted out hasn’t stopped calls recently for theHouse to open impeachment hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas, at left in front row, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., at right in front row, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor.


1970.No credible evidence emerged, and the hearings closed without a public vote. “But Douglas used to say that


he was terrified he was going to be thrown off,” saidHutchinson, a former clerk to the justice. In Thomas’s case, it is an old


charge renewed. It was resurrected by the call his wife Virginia Thomas made to Anita Hill, asking her to apologize for the sexual harassment charges Hill made at Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings more than 19 years ago. Hill instead publicized the call


and repeated the accusations. Then came a former girlfriend of Thomas, who had kept her silence since the 1991 controversy.


Administrative lawjudge LillianMcEwen told The


Washington Post that she found Hill’s description of Thomas “consistent with the way he lived his personal life then.” Thomas has declined to comment. The disclosure has not prompted much interest in Congress to relive the controversy. But a small band of liberal civil rights activists say it should. “The laws are clear [that]


perjury to Congress is a crime and an impeachable offense,” Earl OfariHenderson of the Los AngelesUrban Policy Roundtable wrote toHouse Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers on behalf of himself and others. “TheHouse is duty-bound to bring articles of impeachment against Thomas.” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) is pushing the case against


Roberts.His offense, DeFazio said, was the court’s 5 to 4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which said corporations and unions are protected by the First Amendment in using their general treasuries for unlimited electoral advocacy. DeFazio, on the negative end


of some of that spending in Tuesday’s elections, told the Huffington Post that he’d had enough. “They’ve opened the floodgates, and personally, I’m investigating articles of impeachment against Justice Roberts for perjuring during his Senate hearings, where he said he wouldn’t be a judicial activist, and he wouldn’t overturn precedents,” DeFazio said. His calls have not received


ll across the country Tuesday, political incumbents are bracing for


much support. But they have prompted some conservatives to say:Well, what about Sotomayor? Republican senators have complained about Sotomayor’s testimony, in which she said the court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller , which for the first time recognized an individual’s right to gun ownership, was “settled law.” But last term, when the court


was asked whether that right also applied to state and local government efforts to restrict gun ownership, she sided with the three dissenters from Heller in an opinion that made the question seem anything but settled.


According to the group Justice


at Stake, which says its purpose is to support an independent judiciary, such decisions should not provoke retaliation. “Almost every American,


liberal and conservative, has been angered by particular legal rulings, but that’s because we ask courts to settle tough legal disputes,” the group’s executive director Bert Brandenburg said in a statement. “It is reckless to threaten judges with ouster simply because we don’t like a particular decision.” Still, the Internet buzzes with impeachment calls, including one for newJustice Elena Kagan, who has heard a total of four cases.


Adam Freedman, a commentator at Ricochet.com, lays out a prospective perjury case against the former solicitor general, who said there is not a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage. If she finds later that banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, maybe hearings will be warranted. Freedman brings up the point


mainly to call DeFazio a “crank” for his Roberts remarks. But “being a crankmyself,” Freedman wrote, “I like to get started early.”


barnesb@washpost.com


Chu wants consumers to use their ‘braaaains’


BY NATASHA T. METZLER The walking dead have infil-


trated the Energy Department. Energy Secretary Steven Chu


shared a picture of himself as a zombie on his Facebook page in an effort to teach users about saving electricity. “To date, there is no scientific


evidence about the existence of zombies, but what about vam- pires?” Chu asked in a Facebook note. He went on to warn readers


about “vampire appliances,” such as computers, stereos and DVD players, which consume power even in standby mode. Chu said these types of appli-


ances could increase a house- hold’s monthly electricity bills by at least 10 percent. To ward off these particular vampires, Chu suggested using power strips, which make it easier to turn off a cluster of unused equipment, and putting computers into sleep mode. A member of the secretary’s


staff found the zombified photo of Chu on a technology blog and forwarded it to him, said Energy Department spokesman Dan Leistikow. “As a lifelong geek, I’ve never


had such a cool Halloween cos- tume,” Chu wrote at www.face- book.com/stevenchu. He is an active Facebook user,


with more than 14,500 followers. Recent posts include his thoughts on the film “The Social Network,” a question-and-an- swer session about home energy efficiency and a video tribute to his high school physics teacher. “He sees Facebook as an ex-


tremely valuable tool to speak to people directly,” Leistikow said. — Associated Press


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