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The Spectacle Blog
Reason’s Peter Suderman draws attention to the news that the Senate approved a plan to fund the “doc fix” — a measure to prevent drastic cuts to Medicare payments to doctors — by reducing funds dedicated to the health insurance exchanges set up by Obamacare. Suderman notes that this doc fix was a point of contention during the Obamacare debate. Republicans argued that it should be added to the cost of the bill, while Democrats insisted otherwise:
Democrats argued that the doc fix was a separate issue, unrelated to the new law and therefore unnecessary to include in the bill or the cost estimates. But that was pretty hard to believe: Reports indicated that Harry Reid had used the doc fix to buy support for the health care overhaul from the American Medical Association, and an early draft had included a fix. The cost proved to be too much.
And as of this week, it’s even harder to buy the line that the doc fix is somehow unrelated to the new health care law: Senate leadership has reportedly reached a deal to delay the called-for cuts and pay for a one year extension of Medicare’s payment rates. And they’re paying for it by taking money out of the health insurance subsidies included in the health care overhaul:
It seems to me there are two possibilities here: the doc fix should be included in the cost of Obamacare, or the Democrats should never be able to claim that they passed “comprehensive” health care reform. Medicare is a big part of health care in this country, and clearly it needs immediate reform.
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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/12/09/comprehensively-wrong
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Curly Smith| 12.9.10 @ 12:37PM
I have to agree with the Democrats. ObamaCare cut the reimbursement rate under Medicare, that's a material reduction in future cost projections. The Democrats certainly expected Republicans to join them in "fixing" the cuts and thus enable them to claim both the cost savings and saving Medicare. But the fault lies with the GOP for going along with the game. The Dems passed odious legislation and now the GOP rushes in to fix it - like they always do. They should not. Let it hang like a stone around the necks of the Democrats until it is fully repealed. Quit saving the Democrats from themselves. Fixing the "doc cuts" reduces the reasons for repeal, perhaps that explains the GOP's actions?
darcy| 12.9.10 @ 2:16PM
The GOP is skating on very thin ice. They repeatedly show themselves as enablers of statists, rather than as their opponents.
One must conclude, rationally, that Republicans, with few exceptions, are "good" with the growing central power apparatus and have either compromised their consciences irretrievably or have been in on the "game" all along. Either way, they are proving themselves unequal to the task of unwinding central control.
We will have to find a replacement for them.
What we're living through -- and have been for the past 100 years -- is an abandonment of America by our intelligentsia in the pursuit of a dystopian Marxist-socialist dreamworld. Chip by chip, and sometimes chunks at a time, the edifice that was America has been blasted away and we are left with mere tracings of the structure that once made us a free people.
Republicans should know that patriots are wise to them and their evil dealings with the central-planners. Patriots do understand the "big picture," the forces at work to eliminate the influence of Western culture -- and the Judeo-Christian values that underpin it and the American freedoms that flow from it.
We do recognize propaganda when we hear it and read it; we do see through the liberal squish-talk employed to make liberty's destruction appealing to the drones and "politically acceptable."
Obamacare is totalitarianism writ large, all packaged in double-speak and platitudes. If Republicans are unsure of that -- even in the slightest -- then by their inaction they will seal their fate.
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