or sprays, are being sold in health stores, and supporters of the diet craze say it’s a “weight-loss miracle.” HCG is a hormone produced during pregnancy by the placenta. Dr. Laree Hooker, of Tempe, Ariz., said there is no evidence that HCG products effectively help people lose weight. “With the injectible HCG, all the literature shows that after the protocol, it basically recalibrates your metabolism for your body’s new set point for your weight, and that evidence is just not present for the homeopathic version,” Hooker said. Elizabeth Miller, who oversees the FDA’s Internet health-fraud team, said HCG products t from Democrats, who charge it would "end Medicare as we know it." The Senate rejected it in a vote last week, but also unanimously struck down an alternative plan proposed by President Obama.  Democrats said they wanted to leave it off the table while Vice President Biden leads a bipartisan group of senators to come up with a new budget that would include cuts in spending that would satisfy lawmakers who don't want to increase the nation's borrowing limit without reducing government's size. "The one thing we can't do is nothing," McConnell said. "The president, to his credit, is at the table. ... We're going to negotiate the contours of the plan in these negotiations. I'm personally very comfortable with the way Paul Ryan would structure it in the out years, but we have a Democratic president. We're going to have to negotiate with him on the terms of changing Medicare so we can save Medicare." Appearing on the same program, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called on Republicans to abandon the House Medicare plan, noting an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that says it would require seniors to shoulder an increasingly large share of their health care costs. Schumer said there are only three options -- doing nothing, the Ryan plan or a Democratic vision that preserves benefits and changes "delivery systems," but does "not let providers