Obama Told at Health Care Summit Americans Don't Want Abortion

Washington, DC -- It took almost the entire length of the debate at the White House health care summit for the issue of abortion to come up and, when it did, pro-life Rep. John Boehner told President Barack Obama that Americans don't want abortion funding in the health care bill Congress is considering.

http://www.lifenews.com/bio3058.html

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The new health care plan President Barack Obama released today contains massive abortion funding, but a top pro-life attorney who monitors bioethics issues says it presents other concerns. The changes Obama proposes to the Senate health care bill also promote rationing.

Burke Balch, an attorney who is the director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee, explained the problems to LifeNews.com.

"The Obama health care proposal issued this morning would take away from America’s senior citizens their current right to add their own money on top of the government Medicare contribution to get health insurance less likely to deny treatment through tightly controlled managed care," Balch said.

"It would do so even as it cuts the government contribution to Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars," he adds.

Under “Title III . . . Guaranteeing Benefits for Seniors by Ending Overpayments to Insurance Companies,” Balch notes that the Obama proposal talks about Medicare Advantage plans -- the alternative that now allows older Americans, if they wish, to pay more to get insurance less likely to ration treatment.

The Obama plan says Medicare Advantage plans will “be prohibited from charging seniors more than they would pay for services delivered under the traditional Medicare program.”

Balch responds: "Thus, older Americans would be prohibited by law from making up the Medicare shortfall by using their own money to save their own lives."

"This means that, even as more and more doctors and other health care providers are leaving the Medicare program because of low government reimbursement rates – rates that under the Obama bill will decline still more in comparison to medical inflation – senior citizens will have nowhere to turn," the pro-life attorney explains. "Their only option will be tightly managed plans that provide less and less treatment."

The Obama proposal then goes on to claim that “all ideas that ration care...will be banned."

Balch calls that "genuine chutzpah" because the Obama plan makes that claim "even as it imposes what will be ever-increasing rationing on senior citizens."

The Senate health care bill already contains provisions that threaten to ration lifesaving medical treatment for seniors.

NRLC says state commissioners of the new health insurance exchanges created by the bill would be given significant power. They could deny people who are trying to obtain policies in the exchange the option of choosing health plans less likely to deny treatment, by limiting what they would be allowed to pay for such policies.

Related web sites:
National Right to Life Committee - http://www.nrlc.org We have Tenncare in Tennessee, a form of Romney care and obamadeathcare.

Do some reading, these are articles since Jan of 2010, older articles tell of waste, fraud, illegals, and earlier cuts to curtail rising cost.

TennCare cuts threaten Nashville General hospital | tennessean.com ...

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100204/NEWS0204/2040350/TennCare-cuts-threaten-Nashville-General-hospital

TennCare Cuts Under Way Now

http://www.memphisdailynews.com/editorial/Article.aspx?id=47622

Call it coincidence or bad timing, but many physicians in Tennessee began taking a 14 percent cut for seeing TennCare patients on the same day Gov. Phil Bredesen announced deep cuts in health care spending.

TennCare Cuts May Close Some Hospitals

http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/dpp/news/local/020710-tenncare-cuts-may-close-some-hospitals

TennCare Cuts May Close Some Hospitals

Proposed TennCare funding cuts would close The Med, hospital officials say

By Toby Sells
Published Friday, January 29, 2010
http://m.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/jan/29/med-cuts-would-kill-us/

Obama: No reduced Medicare benefits in health care reform

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/28/obama.health.care/index.html

Will healthcare reform mean cuts in Medicare for seniors?

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2009/1017/will-healthcare-reform-mean-cuts-in-medicare-for-seniors Health Reform’s Hidden Victims

Young people and seniors would pay a high price for ObamaCare.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203517304574306303720472842.html

Slashing Medicare to pay for healthcare reform an ugly shell game

Dr. Stuart M. Shapiro,
July 27, 2009

http://www.mcknights.com/slashing-medicare-to-pay-for-healthcare-reform-an-ugly-shell-game/article/140656/

If the cost is by cutting Medicaid and Medicare, then taxpayers are in for a rude awakening when millions will retire without money to pay for their healthcare. Ransoming seniors' long-term care for immediate, large-scale health reform is more politically beneficial for its supporters in the short-term than it is reasonable for everyone in the long run.

In fact, even in the short-term, one could argue that taxpayers, including the elderly, are looking at an old-fashioned shell game from Washington. No sooner was the ink dry on the federal stimulus package, which provided millions of dollars to support care for the elderly in Pennsylvania, before Congress and the administration began to propose major cuts in Medicare to finance healthcare reform. Because Medicare payments support quality care in our nation's nursing homes, the proposed cuts nationally approaching $50 billion in Medicare payments for the care of the elderly is guaranteed to undercut the quality gains of the past decade. In Pennsylvania, if the proposals currently on the table are enacted, these policies would result in an almost 10% reduction in cumulative payments over 10 years, or more than $2.1 billion.

None of the answers on healthcare, Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare is easy. But there is one thing we do know: Our population is growing older, and doing so rapidly. Cutting money from the programs that finance care for Pennsylvania seniors is seriously flawed. There is no simple or single solution. But there is a wrong way, and taking money from the care for American seniors is deeply flawed.

Stuart H. Shapiro, M.D., is the president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.