Hey, remember when Democrats said their health care legislation would strengthen Medicare? And that the cut to Medicare funding and other continued system deficiencies wouldn’t negatively impact our nation’s senior citizens? Turns out they were wrong.

The number of doctors refusing new Medicare patients because of low government payment rates is setting a new high, just six months before millions of Baby Boomers begin enrolling in the government health care program.

Recent surveys by national and state medical societies have found more doctors limiting Medicare patients, partly because Congress has failed to stop an automatic 21% cut in payments that doctors already regard as too low. The cut went into effect Friday, even as the Senate approved a six-month reprieve. The House has approved a different bill.

While the doctor fix undoubtedly had a significant impact on the most recent denials, Ed Morrissey points out that the latest failure to act by Congress wasn’t the only factor at work here. USA Today provides some handy stats:

• The American Academy of Family Physicians says 13% of respondents didn’t participate in Medicare last year, up from 8% in 2008 and 6% in 2004.

• The American Osteopathic Association says 15% of its members don’t participate in Medicare and 19% don’t accept new Medicare patients. If the cut is not reversed, it says, the numbers will double.

• The American Medical Association says 17% of more than 9,000 doctors surveyed restrict the number of Medicare patients in their practice. Among primary care physicians, the rate is 31%.

Medicare has long been paying doctors less than private sector counter-parts. That has resulted in doctors, already burdened with significant liabilities and operating costs, turning away Medicare patients. The nation’s seniors suffer.

Democrats responded to that issue by…further cutting Medicare in order to make ObamaCare seem less expensive. They promised to restore the funding through the doctor fix, of course, but they never quite got around to that. End result? More doctors turning away more Medicare patients.