WASHINGTON (AP) — Hope is fading for a Capitol Hill drive to permanently fix Medicare’s outdated payment formula and spare doctors from automatic cuts in their fees next month. Now the question is whether lawmakers can regroup and come up with a short-term solution when the current patch expires.

Even though there’s widespread support for bipartisan legislation to repair, once and for all, the broken Medicare formula — it threatens doctors with a 24 percent cut in their Medicare payments — there’s no agreement on how to bear the 10-year, $140 billion cost.