What Problems? The economy is GREAT! The Gulf is CLEAN! Israel is SAFE! The world LOVES US!................
Posted on 06/02/2010 5:59:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
Remember the health care issue? Well, the fiscal consequences of the socialized medicine scheme enacted by President Barack Obama and Congress just two months ago are already beginning to snowball.
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was one of the key architects and advocates of Obamacare. He was back on the House floor on Friday delivering an urgent plea to fellow Democrats that inadvertently -- or, perhaps, unavoidably -- revealed the fraudulent nature of our new national health care regime.
It was supposed to save the taxpayers money, remember?
"This legislation will lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades," Obama said when he signed the bill.
On Friday, Waxman declared that the sky is about to fall on the Medicare system. He went to the House floor to "urge" his colleagues to vote for a bill that includes $102 billion in new federal spending and would add $54 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years -- $25 billion of it in the few months remaining in this fiscal year.
Why did Waxman believe this new borrowing-and-spending was necessary?
"It's absolutely critical to do this if we are going to keep doctors in Medicare and keep the promise to Medicare beneficiaries that they will have access to physicians' services," said Waxman. "This provision will provide a moderate increase in physicians' fees, 2.2 percent for the rest of the year. If we don't act, doctors' fees will be cut by 21 percent from where they are today. This would be unconscionable."
It would not merely be unconscionable. If the 21-percent cut in Medicare fees for doctors -- that, in fact, legally took effect on June 1 -- is allowed to stand, many doctors in this country will simply stop seeing Medicare patients. They will not be able to afford it. The cost to them of serving their patients will exceed what they are paid. Their profit margin will be swept away.
To make precisely this point, 12 national surgeons' associations -- including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons and the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery -- sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter last Wednesday warning her what would happen if Medicare doctors' fees are slashed as they are scheduled to be under current law.
"These continued payment cuts, rising practice costs and a lack of certainty going forward, make it difficult, if not impossible, for already financially challenged surgical practices to continue to treat Medicare patients," the surgeons' associations told Pelosi.
The letter pointed the speaker toward the results of a survey of more than 13,000 physicians done in February by the Surgical Coalition, a group of more than 20 medical associations. The survey asked these doctors what they would do if Medicare fees were slashed by the scheduled 21.2 percent.
Twenty-nine percent said they would opt out of the Medicare system entirely. Almost 69 percent said they would limit the number of appointments they would take from Medicare patients, 45.8 percent said they would start referring complex Medicare patients to other physicians, 45.3 percent said they would stop providing certain services, 43.8 percent said they would defer purchasing new medical equipment and 42.7 percent said they would cut their staff.
Almost 4 percent of the doctors said they would close or sell their practices.
Why did Congress plan to slash the doctors' Medicare fees in the first place? It didn't. In the past, the majority in Congress has routinely enacted budget bills that fraudulently assumed that on some future date the federal government would dramatically slash the Medicare fees paid to doctors, knowing that before that date arrived the majority would pass "emergency" legislation postponing the cuts to some still-future date. The majority in Congress does this so the long-term deficits caused by their spending bills appear to be smaller than they actually are.
As originally proposed, Obamacare would have ended this practice, permanently setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors at the true anticipated level. But the Congressional Budget Office determined that doing so would have added $208 billion to the cost of Obamacare over 10 years, forcing the CBO to declare that Obamacare added to the deficit rather than reduced it. That would have cost Obamacare votes on the House floor and quite possibly defeated the legislation.
So the congressional leadership stripped the "doc fix" out of Obamacare and left it to another day.
Waxman went down to the floor last Friday to declare that day had come. Unfortunately, for him, the Senate had already left town for its Memorial Day vacation. So, the current fix will have to wait until it returns.
Even then, the fix only accounts for $22.9 billion of the $102 billion cost of the bill the House did pass on Friday. Most of the rest of the money is for extending unemployment benefits and special targeted tax breaks.
The $22.9 billion fix for the doctors' fees -- if passed by the Senate -- would only last through September 2011. Then Congress will presumably do it all again -- or let the Medicare system collapse.
In the meantime, Obamacare is supposed to cut half a trillion in spending from elsewhere in Medicare, while Obama's budget -- not counting the $54 billion in new debt included in this bill -- is expected to add $9.8 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
What Problems? The economy is GREAT! The Gulf is CLEAN! Israel is SAFE! The world LOVES US!................
We’re so hosed.....
For MEDICARE seniors (which includes every military retiree aged 65 and above, dumped out of military medical care into MEDICARE for primary insurance)
the fat lady is not singing, but she is practicing her scales
The Dems thought that the doctors would just sit and take their medicine. No, they went Galt....................
“Hope N’ Change”
We will get hosed when the massive, Civil Rights Era Size anti-Obama demonstrations start in DC..................
If the 21-percent cut in Medicare fees for doctors....
This amount was confirmed by my dermatologist in a brief political discussion about 2 months ago.
I then said looks like you wont be in business that long at those rates and the heads of the young assistants jerked like deer in the headlights.
I am convinced that Waxman would relish the idea that doctors will get paid less, except, he had a flash of insight. He realized that the doctors still have the freedom to opt out of the system, oops. When mom and pop democrat realize that their doctor no longer will treat them due to Obamacare, these seniors just might not vote democrat.
Obie/Waxman/Pelosi (Dems) bill covers the “30 million uninsured” and give them coverage.
How about deporting the 30 million illegal aliens and fix the problem?
“Hosed” as in water cannons or machine guns? I would think large demonstrations will be in order.
Perhaps, we as voters should seek a real solution and remove all incumbents from office. (Senator Patty Murray, D WA would be a great starting place.)
A second solution would be to have our elected officials, their families, and staffs live under what they mandate for the rest of us.
This bill will NOT be passed as of June 1st.. This “Healthcare” bill is anything but...
It is a Tax Bill...and there will never be any spending in “healthcare benefits” .. They aim to create an environment where literally your access to care..will need to be through your congressman.
>> the heads of the young assistants jerked like deer in the headlights
Reality shined in the eyes of an Obama voter causes ‘em to behave like that. Just like deer on the roadside.
I got a big government paid advertisement for Obamacare yesterday. It’s wonderful. It’s going to save me money and provide me more services, and Obama did it.
Except that I just got an increased bill.
Yeah sure, with a 10% unemployment rate and a deficit of almost $13 trillion, and the national debt of over $13 trillion. Why worry?
The dims shifted their age old strategy. Use to be, they would tax, then spend. This go round, they spent then have to scramble to raise the taxes to cover the spending. Problem is they put the train in motion in 2007 when things looked rosy and they could make tax projections as far as the eye could see. When the bottom fell out, they didn’t even slow down. They were/are so determined to garner as much power as possible, they made the decision to go full speed ahead regardless of reality. Their projections are just a fantasy now and still they won’t relent. Their blind arrogance and greed will bankrupt us all.
Aw, maybe these lousy doctors will stop doing unnecessary amputations and stop dumping their welfare patients on neighboring hospitals (oh, that’s what Michelle Obama’s hospital was doing).
As far as I know TRICARE is not being cut
It’s not just Medicare, but Tricare is cutting back by 21% too. Spoke to the lady at quilting who use to work with the Navy medical, she is a widow on Tricare. She is now having trouble finding doctors that will take her. And she isn’t getting any answers about the NEW nearly $7,000 (per couple) fees that go into effect next year for TFL. The damn government doesn’t even know IF they’ve repealed those new fees or not!
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