Boucher's no vote came from the part of the bill that decreased medicaid payments to doctors. I'd say it partially came from the attitude of the average voters in SWVA as well. Most don't like to read or think, they like to hear and accept...and a yes vote would have hurt his re-election. I would bet that if the passing or failure of the bill depended on his vote, his vote wouldn't have been "no". Good political move for him IMO. Fact is, most family care doctors in this area have a much higher percentage of medicare and medicaid patients than doctors in most other areas of the country do because of the rampant poverty in SWVA. And lower payment from the government means less income for the doctors, which means more will say working in this area isn't worth their time. But, the thing is, during the Bush multi-trillion dollar giveaway of 01-08, government medicare and medicaid payments to doctors were INCREASED ROUGHLY 150%...so a 20% deduction of what their reimbursements are shouldn't hurt as much as they claim it will. Just another group trying to fleece the US citizen.