While most health care interests and members of Congress want to see a permanent end to the annual Medicare “doc fix” problem, it appears increasingly likely that the next “fix” will be yet another short-term patch.

The obstacle?  How to pay for a permanent solution.

With the price tag for a permanent solution of around $150 billion, members of Congress have found themselves hard-pressed to find offsets that do not engender swift, angry response from health care interest groups.  Those groups want a permanent solution to the problem but also want others to pay for it.

The result, many suspect, will be a shorter solution and yet another attempt at a permanent solution either later this year or early next year.

Read about the multi-faceted challenges involved in addressing this perennial problem in this article from the online publication The Hill.