WASHINGTON — Doctors who treat Medicare patients would get a last-minute reprieve from a scheduled 24 percent cut in their government reimbursements under a bill that’s on track to pass the House.

It would be the 17th time Congress has stepped in with a temporary fix to a poorly designed Medicare fee formula that dates to a 1997 budget law. House action, expected today, comes after efforts to permanently fix the formula appear to have fizzled.

The heavily lobbied legislation also contains numerous other health care provisions of interest to doctors, hospitals, drug companies and other health care providers.

The House was to vote under special expedited procedures that require a two-thirds vote to pass, and there was at least some uncertainty about whether the measure would advance, with some senior Democrats still pressing for a permanent solution.

Timing in the Senate was also uncertain, although there was a lot of pressure to act by a Monday midnight deadline. Otherwise, Medicare would stop processing payments to doctors until the payment fix was enacted.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was likely to seek to speed the measure through the Senate as early as today, but it would take cooperation from all 100 senators to make that happen.

There is widespread support for bipartisan legislation to repair, once and for all, the broken Medicare formula, but there is no agreement on how to bear the 10-year, $140 billion cost.