Washington —- In a swift rebuke to President Bush, Congress voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to override his veto of a Medicare bill that would forestall pay cuts to doctors who treat seniors, the disabled and military personnel.

The 383-41 House vote was followed by a 70-26 Senate vote, both easily meeting the two-thirds threshold needed for an override.

Democratic Reps. John Lewis of Atlanta and John Barrow of Savannah and Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Athens, all of whom faced opponents in Tuesday's primaries, missed the vote. Georgia's remaining lawmakers supported the override, with the exception of Republican Reps. John Linder of Duluth and Lynn Westmoreland of Coweta County.

The bill will halt a scheduled 10.6 percent cut in payments to physicians and instead institute a 1.1 percent payment increase in 2009. The pay cut would have taken effect Tuesday, and many doctors had said it would force them to stop treating Medicare patients.

Bush opposed the bill because funds to prevent the cut in payments would come from more than $12 billion in cuts to insurance companies that offer coverage under the private Medicare Advantage program, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Issuing his veto Tuesday morning, he declared the bill "objectionable" because it would take funds from private health insurers, would "undermine the Medicare prescription drug program" and is fiscally irresponsible.

"I support the primary objective of this legislation, to forestall reductions in physician payments," Bush said in a statement. "Yet taking choices away from seniors to pay physicians is wrong."

"This is a horrible way to do what we're doing today," said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), an opponent of the bill.

But Democrats depicted Bush as siding with private companies over seniors in his drive to privatize the federal program for the elderly and the disabled.

They and some Republicans said the government's payments to the private plans are too generous and drive up costs for taxpayers as well as the 44 million participants in Medicare.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said the federal government spends more on patients in Medicare Advantage than on comparable patients in traditional Medicare, leading to billions of dollars in additional costs annually.

"We take some of that unnecessary waste and we use it to pay physicians who are working hard and ought not to have a cut in their reimbursement rates," Doggett said.

The bill originally passed the House by 355-59 and then passed the Senate this month in a dramatic 69-30 vote that followed the unexpected appearance of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who took a break from cancer treatment to return to the Senate to support the bill.

Without the veto override, 60 percent of doctors would have been forced to limit the number of new Medicare patients they treat, according to the American Medical Association, which supports the bill.

The bill also affects the 9.2 million active and retired military personnel and their family members who use the military's Tricare system, because it uses payment rates set by Medicare.

Failure to overturn the veto would have been "nothing less than a disaster for the military community," said Mark Seavey, director of the National Legislative Commission of the American Legion.

Seavey said one of the greatest health care challenges facing military families is finding doctors who will treat them under the Tricare system. The reimbursement rate cut could make the problem much worse, he said.

The annual cuts in physicians' Medicare reimbursement rates stem from 1990s legislation that instituted small annual payment cuts as part of an effort to lower the deficit.

Congress has usually canceled those cuts and as a result they have become cumulative —- totaling 10.6 percent this year.

Congress has not rewritten or repealed the requirement for the cuts, largely because it has been unable to agree on exactly how to do so.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.