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The Right Prescription
Ruination From Obama-Baucus
"This bill is paid for," Senator Max Baucus grinned upon receiving the CBO report scoring his government health care takeover bill as slightly reducing rather than increasing the deficit. But Baucus does not tell you who is paying for it.
CBO scores the Baucus bill as increasing federal spending by close to $1 trillion. That is entirely paid for by Medicare cuts and tax increases, including tax increases on the middle class which Obama pledged over and over would never happen, "in any form," if he was elected. The New York Times and the Democrats are now trying to tell us that this means the bill and its government handouts are free.
Or, as other silly people have said, "the bill pays for itself." No it doesn't. You pay for it through Medicare cuts and tax increases.
Here is another deficit neutral proposal. The government takes 100% of everybody's income and spends it on welfare for the government's political supporters. Such a bill would also "pay for itself." Don't be surprised if this is Senator Jay Rockefeller's next amendment.
Government Health Care Rationing
The Baucus bill includes specific, overt, government health care rationing, which the Obama Administration has already begun to implement under existing legal authority. Baucus's bill provides that the top 10% of doctors who spend the most in Medicare funds on their patients will automatically be penalized with reduced compensation for the services they provide to seniors under Medicare.
This will create, as intended, a new competition among doctors to see who can provide the least to their patients under Medicare, to avoid the personal penalty to their own compensation. Just think how doctors will react in this brave, new world to patients with serious health problems like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity, requiring substantial Medicare resources to treat. The minute one walks in the door, there goes this year's vacation, college for the doctor's daughter, that second hand car promised to the teenage son.
Doctors will just retreat from providing care for serious illnesses. They will "specialize" in low resource care for the more healthy. And the truly sick will discover that finding a doctor for necessary health care will become quite difficult, if they can find one at all. President Obama has said if you like your doctor you can keep him. But the question is, under the incentives of the Obama health plan, will your doctor keep you.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is already using its existing regulatory authority under Medicare to get the rationing started. As the Wall Street Journal reported on October 6, "Democrats are systematically attacking specific medical fields like cardiology and oncology[cancer treatment]." The just adopted Medicare payment rules for next year impose "an 11% overall cut on cardiology and 19% on radiation oncology." The Journal continues:
The basic tools of heart specialists -- echocardiograms (stress tests) and catherizations -- are slashed by 42% and 24% respectively. Jack Lewin, who heads the American College of Cardiologists, said in an interview that the crackdown will cause "a horrible disruption" that will force many community and independent practices to close their doors, lay off staff, or make senior patients wait days or weeks for tests and services.
Payments for diagnostic imaging services like MRIs and CT scans that help identify cancer early would also be cut by 24%. Payments for antitumor radiation therapy will be cut by 44%. The American Society for Radiation Oncology says in the Journal that these cuts "will have a devastating effect on cancer patients' access to care."
It is sickening that this is already happening in America, as the government attacks the current, high quality, middle class health care provided to the sickest and most vulnerable. When the doctor comes to tell you or a loved one that you are going to die from heart disease or cancer, he is only going to say that nothing more can be done for you. He is not going to explain that this is so because of the health care payment system adopted by Obama and Baucus. This is the socialist change that Obama is bringing us in his effort to cut America down to size similar to other, poorer countries around the world.
Medicare Cuts
But this is only the beginning of the rationing involved in Obama/Baucuscare. The bill would cut Medicare by $400 billion to start, including $133 billion for the private Medicare Advantage plans that 10 million seniors have chosen because those plans provide them a better deal than standard Medicare. While Obama has repeatedly promised everyone that if you like your health plan you can keep it, this would not apply to seniors on Medicare Advantage if the more than $100 billion in cuts for those plans forces them out of business. In any event, seniors on Medicare Advantage would lose benefits under these plans as a result of these cuts.
The same would be true for all other seniors on Medicare. The other almost $300 billion in Medicare cuts would reduce the payments to doctors and hospitals for the medical services they provide to seniors. Of course, this means that doctors and hospitals will cut back on the medical services and care they provide to seniors under Medicare.
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Jim O'Brien| 10.14.09 @ 7:32AM
The medical plan passed by the Senate Finance Committee yesterday will not improve medical care. It will make medical insurance premiums skyrocket. It will reduce Medicare for millions of seniors by $400 to 500 billion. It will drive more people into Medicaid, and increase government subsidies. It will cost $1.5 trillion or more over ten years and result in huge tax increases and/or increasingly unsustainable levels of public debt.
1) It will increase the threshold for deducting medical expenses on your tax return to 10% of adjusted gross income, from 7.5%. In other words, you can only deduct medical expenses that exceed 10% of AGI, instead of 7.5% of AGI.
2) By limiting co-pays and deductibles, it will increase insurance premiums paid by consumers.
3) By requiring insurance companies to take "all comers" regardless of pre-existing conditions, it will increase premiums paid by consumers. It will also limit our choices of insurance companies, since some will exit the business altogether.
4) New taxes on insurance companies, drug companies, and medical providers will result in higher medical expenses for consumers, since the taxes will be passed along in the prices charged.
5) $400 to $500 billion in cuts to Medicare will result in reduced availability of medical care, and lower quality care, for millions of senior citizens --- those who are most likely to need medical care. These cuts include over $100 billion in cuts to the very beneficial Medicare Advantage plans currently offered to seniors in coordination with private insurance companies. Obama does not like Medicare Advantage plans.
6) A 40% excise tax on employer-sponsored medical insurance plans will cause more companies to drop or reduce coverage for their employees.
7) A fine of $750 per person will be imposed for those who don't buy medical insurance. This provision violates the U.S. Constitution.
8) The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Senate Finance Committee's plan, passed today, would result in "savings" of $81 billion over ten years. This is a gross distortion of the truth. According to independent sources, the cost over the first ten years is more likely to be $1.5 trillion, requiring massive new tax increases and/or massive new government debt. The existing level of debt has already been labeled unsustainable by well-known "experts".
The Finance Committee plan is insane, unless of course one considers the real objective of the perpetrators, which is to kill private insurance and ultimately drive everyone into the so-called "public option", socialized medicine.
Melvin| 10.14.09 @ 7:53AM
Like I said many time before. How long are we going to put up with this crap? Oh sure, we blotivate here on American Spectator, we discuss, we rant, but nothing changes.
Life will get harder for us and even harder for our children, but yet we do nothing but rant and rave.
People, everything we know and love about this country is falling apart around us. The politicians are turning us into lab rats to test their social re-engineering schemes and the expense of our lives.
But we still talk and rant and do nothing. What the sam hell are we afraid of? There are many things that we can do, but everyone is waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting. Is it that government has struck such fear into us, that all we do is rant and then crawl back to the safety of our rocks and hide under them?
Have we turned into such cowards to defend this Country that we allow government to beat us into submission like red headed step-children.
Government knows that we are a bunch of scared rabbits that scatter when Obama goes boo, and that is why he and the rest of his czarist fascists that he surrounds himself with are laughing themselves silly, "Oh, looook Mr. President, the dumb masses are protesting and tea-bagging again, ooh, ohh, ohh."
There is only one solution to the problem with government. For those that remember history and what the Italians did to Benito Mussolini when they caught up with him during World War Two. This is the only way that we can deal with fascists.
People we need to understand one thing, it is us or them, and there is nothing in between.
Alan Brooks| 10.14.09 @ 7:17PM
I think the opposite; health care WILL improve, but life is becoming empty.
Live longer, but the life becomes animalistic, tawdy, devoid of dignity.
The utter banality of evil.
Alan Brooks| 10.14.09 @ 7:21PM
(pardon, tawdry, not tawdy-- but 'tawdy' sounds right)
You're not looking ahead... health care iS slowly improving; but taste, dignity? going South.
However, to each his own,
whatever floats your boat and turns your crank.
Stephanie| 10.14.09 @ 8:50AM
Careful Melvin, you know they are watching.
But I do agree with you. What can we do? Using the ballot box seems to me, too little too late.
what's the answer?
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.14.09 @ 8:55AM
Melvin
Well stated. Please email me and tell me about great conservative (repealers) in your area.
Team America will get behind them right the heck now.
Sometimes, even good guys need an "attaboy"
In my district we are fortunate to have a splendid Rep. and a pretty good pair of Senators. I don't have to work locally except for those attaboys, so I can help with other critter districts.
Melvin| 10.14.09 @ 9:36AM
Good morning Ken, In my area we have Rep. Walter Jones, and the Senators are Richard Burr, and Kay Hagan.
Kay Hagan is a died in the wool Obamaite who already declared that she will vote for government run health care even before it had made it past the first committee.
Burr is going to vote against it, but I guess we were spoiled by Senator Jessie Helms and no one to date has been able to fill his shoes.
We have many good people in our area and
organizations like Americans for Prosperity, and others.
I have joned T.E.A.M America, haven't had the chance yet to digest the information that is
available.
Pingback| 10.14.09 @ 10:07AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Ruination From Obama-Baucus [spectat links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Houston Rao| 10.14.09 @ 10:49AM
The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (another congressional research body) concluded that tax payments would indeed rise. And it found that the middle class would be stuck with the tab.
The report projected that the excise tax would raise about $52 billion in 2019. Of that, about $8.9 billion would come from taxpayers with incomes of less than $50,000; about $19.4 billion from taxpayers with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000; and about $17.4 billion from taxpayers with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000.
Add those up, and you see that about 87 percent of the revenue in the original Baucus proposal to finance Obamacare would come from individuals with incomes of less than $200,000.
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid!!
Jon| 10.14.09 @ 11:07AM
Hussein Obama is promised to "fundamentally change the United State of America", the "greatest country in country in the world". We now see that his campaign rhetoric was no idle promise. By taking control of the basic necessity of health care and negatively impacting those in most need of that care (the oldest among us), the "progresseives" will set the stage for the the further erosion of our liberties through Marxist government policies and mandated programs. Tax hikes and premium increases that further erode our spending power. Requirements and associated penalties that frighten us into complaince. Loss of exisitng health insurance as "Big Brother" imposes its will. Where is the problem solving and incremental apporach to fixing those problems. As Rohm Emmanuel has stated, you should not let a crisis go to waste when you can use it to impose a Marxist governing ideology, beginning with helath care. Our president has said that he believes the Constitution to be an "imperfect document" and should be interpreted differently by later generations as time changes. This effecitvely means that, in his mind, we do not have a solid foundation of beliefs and values as our founding fathers had established.
It is a scary time in America. We need to exercise our voting rights and next fall, remove from office all of those that are complicit in this treachery. Vote them all out of office and elect conservatives with a spine to begin to undo the damamge. Wake up America.
Grzmlyk| 10.14.09 @ 12:38PM
I wonder where Liberal Reader and his ilk are on this post?
Perhaps he's busily amassing ersatz stats on liberal Web sites to prove to us pagan non-believers that Universal Health Care will be wall-to-wall sunshine and lollipops, the apotheosis of Social Justice and government beneficence, a paragon of idyllic health care and vastly reduced costs, with plenty of doctors and spotless healthcare facilities furnished with only the finest equipment and the latest medications.
Why, once we confiscate the ill-gotten lucre residing in the bottomless pockets of this country's odious capitalists and coerce those evil, greedy insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, equipment companies and Big Pharma to provide everything for free, life in America will be just as peachy, just as wonderul, just as sweet as it is in the UK or Canada.
And, be still my liberal heart, all of this will reduce the deficit, praise be to Obama (may He live and rule forever).
Why, once we redistribute the wealth and toss evil conservatives into gulags, rainbow-colored unicorns and pixie dust will punctuate the beautifully verdant, immaculately-manicured landscape that is Sweet Government Control, a technicolor wonderland that will be utterly devoid of the blight of corruption.
What's sad is that if Liberal Reader becomes a victim of Obama's Brave New World of enforced serfdom and an ever-more expensive, ever shabbier national health care - and he will - he STILL won't get it.
Because liberalism comprises exactly two groups: Those who believe in fairy tales and the scum who exploit them.
And still Liberal Reader wonders why nobody on this site takes him seriously. Which proves that he belongs to the former group.
Rmm| 10.14.09 @ 12:45PM
To what do we owe this latest slap in the face, this farce of alot of human energy and time to produce this " health-care reform" legislation that does nadda to improve the "system". Not one paragraph about malpractice tort reform, which is a huge pay-off to money grubbing lawyers, to the tune of an estimated 10% surcharge on the "system". But the most scary aspect in all of this is the big gorilla in the room i.e., the federal debt. Current numbers show that this year debt will climb to 90% of GDP and hit the 100% mark in 2011.
Like Melvin above says, a whole bunch of ranting & raving, but we have to change the direction these tax& spend Dems are trying to take us.
Oldefarte| 10.14.09 @ 1:10PM
Beautifully written, Peter---your factual commentary is detailed TRUTH! It's obvious however that Obama/Democrats simply """""LIE"""""" about all aspects of this [and everything else]. Anyone who believes this excrement is a FOOL, and stupid besides. The question is WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT? Peter correctly recommended that AARP members cancel their membership, which will make a big impact. I'm asking Peter [and all other writers of AS,etc] to publish any/all websites, email addresses,etc of senators/representatives,etc so that us readers can sned email-protests to same. All of these DC congressmen become insolated from their state constituents and become influenced by Pilosi, Reid, the DNC, Obama, etc and end up shoving this garbage down the throats of the American taxpayers [who do not want or need this welfare healthcare excrement]. The nationwide protests are all fine and good to vent one's anger, but are largely ineffective, as congressmen can ignore same. What is needed is to VOTE THESE CONGRESSMEN OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Old Guy| 10.14.09 @ 1:34PM
Two suggestions:
Stop referring to a "bill" when no such thing yet exists. Call for a printed version to be available prior to any vote.
Stop using the terms "liberal" and "progressive." Call them what they are - STATISTS - to whom government, the state, is the be-all and end-all.
Robert Rosencrans| 10.14.09 @ 4:33PM
Here's the truth on the alleged CBO scoring. They admit they have no idea what it will cost.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10.....ealth.html
But Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said his agency had not estimated the impact of the bill on overall national health spending, public and private, and could not say whether it would “bend the cost curve,” as Mr. Obama and lawmakers want.
Likewise, Mr. Elmendorf said he did not know for sure how the bill would affect premiums.
Several senators said they would fight for changes on the Senate floor.
Jeff| 10.14.09 @ 6:46PM
"People, everything we know and love about this country is falling apart around us. The politicians are turning us into lab rats to test their social re-engineering schemes and the expense of our lives."
I agree Melvin, your doing more than enough ranting for everyone. When you guys want to come back to reality everyone who isn't losing their minds will welcome you back with open arms.
Pingback| 10.14.09 @ 5:31PM
terryfrank.net » Good Info on Health Legislation links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Tim| 10.14.09 @ 7:37PM
A brilliant chess move by Obama today announcing that he wants to give Seniors a $250.00 rebate in 2010 because SS will not be giving a cost of living raise.
It's a brilliant diabolical political move because while the Seniors are bought off with these 30 pieces of silver the hope is that enough will be duped into looking the other way while the Health Care proposal cuts their medicare in half.
These guys may be socialist new world order one world government types but they ain't stupid.
but then neither were Stalin, Hitler, Lennin, Chavez, Mao, and Castro to name just a few.
Pingback| 10.15.09 @ 10:13AM
terryfrank.net » Today On the Radio (Thursday) links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
MFay| 10.15.09 @ 11:18AM
Good article as always from a good citizen-sentinel keeping both eyes on the "enemy within". Further to Peter's mention in this article of the Baucus plan's effect on Medicaid and for those of you interested, see if you can access an article in today's National Law Journal entitled: "Pharmacy groups sue over Medicaid cuts in three states." by their reporter Tresa Balda. That article provides another example of how the "Law of Unintended Consequences" simply cannot be ignored or fooled with. Maybe the federal government will Constitutionally abrogate private property and compel doctors, hospitals and pharmacies to provide services at a loss or at 1950s profit levels... The infuriating degree of ignorant tampering with the dynamic structure of the American economy by highly educated thugs and emotionally insecure hacks now brazenly showing their faces promises to indeed bring ruination...
arlene| 10.17.09 @ 12:14AM
lida daidaihua
daidaihua
GringoBob| 10.18.09 @ 4:20PM
my comments are here =
http://Group912.org/shadow/912a.html