Click here to listen to "Do The Right Thing."

Republican senators are feeling the heat (subscription) from medical professionals for allowing a pay cut for doctors serving Medicare patients to go through in late June. The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act, which passed overwhelmingly in the House, would have prevented a 10.6 percent cut, but the measure fell one vote short of Senate approval.

The Bush administration granted a temporary reprieve, giving Congress one more crack at the bill; a vote was expected this afternoon. In advance of that vote, the progressive group Americans United For Change is targeting two Republican senators (both up for re-election) for their votes against the bill. The group launched radio ads in Kentucky (subscription) and Mississippi, calling on Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Roger Wicker, respectively, to "do the right thing" and vote yes today.

"Last month Senator Mitch McConnell had a chance to make the right choice," the Kentucky version of the ad begins. "He could have voted to block the slush fund of tax dollars flowing to private insurance companies -- overpayments that will cost taxpayers $150 billion over the next decade." But instead, McConnell "sided with President Bush and big insurance companies," a decision that "put seniors at risk of losing access to their doctors." The ad encourages listeners to call McConnell and tell him to "make the right choice" this time, "to protect Kentucky seniors who depend on Medicare, not the bottom line of the insurance industry."

Jeremy Funk, the group’s communications director, said, "The question is: This time, will Mitch McConnell, Senator Wicker and the other 38 Republicans who voted ‘nay’ change course and stand with seniors, or with Bush and the insurance companies, which have put us in this health care mess in the first place?"

Roll Call reports (subscription) that many Republicans are open to voting yes on the bill, but only if they are allowed to propose and debate amendments first, something that Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has refused to allow. Even if the bill does make it through the Senate today, Bush has threatened to veto it.