Posted on 04/09/2010 9:04:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Pres. Barack Obama has an unsettling defense of his health-care reform — it’s merely a version of the plan implemented by Massachusetts. Obama wants to associate his reform with the one championed by Mitt Romney in 2006 when he was governor of the Bay State. If the liberal Democrat Obama and the conservative Republican Romney passed similar plans, what can be so radical about Obama’s reform?
This is superficially clever. It not only gives Obama’s plan a centrist patina, it shines a light on a significant obstacle to Romney’s likely repeat bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
Except for the fact that the Massachusetts reform is spiraling out of control.
If the states are the laboratories of democracy, Obamacare’s Menlo Park is about to blow up. Unsustainably high costs and high insurance premiums are leading inexorably toward price controls and rationing. Obama might as well boast that he’s adopted a version of the California fiscal plan, or the Michigan economic-recovery plan.
Obama is correct that his plan and Romney’s share essential features: a mandate that individuals buy insurance, fines on businesses for not offering coverage, heavily regulated insurance exchanges, and large-scale insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. They share something else — utterly fanciful notions of cost control.
Romney believed — and still maintains to this day — that emergency-room visits by the uninsured shifted costs onto everyone else. Never mind that in post-reform Massachusetts there are just as many non-emergency visits to the emergency room as previously, even though only 3 percent of people are uninsured. Many of these patients simply have trouble finding a doctor, a shortage the Massachusetts reform only exacerbates.
Massachusetts has created a different cost-shift problem through its Obamacare-style guarantee that people can wait to get coverage until they’re sick or want medical procedures. The Boston Globe reports, “Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts’ 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.”
Predictably, costs in Massachusetts — always high — have only gone higher; the state now spends about 30 percent more per capita on health care than the rest of the nation. Predictably, the insurance regulations have only made insurance more expensive, as has been the case elsewhere; premiums in the individual market have been growing at a 30 percent annual rate. Predictably, the new health-care program has cost more than expected; spending grew by about 40 percent from 2006 to 2009.
At first, Massachusetts plugged the holes with more taxes and fees. Now, just as Obama is hailing the state as his opening act, it is moving to the next inevitable phase: unapologetic price controls.
The state’s regulators have rejected 235 of 274 premium increases proposed by insurers, an extraordinary exercise of a power that had sat idle on the books since 1977. As the Wall Street Journal points out, the big insurers in Massachusetts are nonprofits like Blue Cross Blue Shield and Harvard Pilgrim, hardly the comic-book villains of liberal rhetoric. The state’s arbitrary clamp-down on rates will force insurers to cut access to care, or go out of business. As subtle as a kneecapping, the state’s move is rationing by proxy.
Insurers have taken to the courts, and most of them have stopped offering new coverage for individuals and small businesses pending a ruling on their request for an injunction. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, meanwhile, wants the power to review the rates of hospitals and doctors and disallow those deemed too high.
And so the free lunch promised Massachusetts in 2006 devolves toward a fiscally beleaguered government setting prices and limiting care, exactly the downward spiral critics fear from Obamacare. At least Romney can say he didn’t know how his experiment would end. Obama has been warned, and still he embraces Massachusetts as our national future.
Romney is a Progressive RINO.
If he wins the primary there really is no hope for the Republic.
Uh, Lowry, it's worse than that. We've all seen the endgame of Romneycare. But Mittens still fails to acknowledge just how wrong it has gone.
Oh, please!
It looks like the Romney pom-pom squad at NR is trying to whitewash Mitt again. Good luck with that, unfortunately for them Mitt keeps opening up his fat mouth to sing the misguided praises of his health care reform legislation.
Another healthcare fraud criminal case disposition that was investigated and brought to prosecution under Bush administration.
Obama says he and his cronies will root out medical fraud under his socialist healthcare regiem. I doubt it.
Detroit clinic owner sent to prison
Published: April 7, 2010 at 8:45 PM
DETROIT, April 7 (UPI) — A Detroit clinic owner was sentenced to 81 months in federal prison and ordered to help pay $9.77 million in restitution for Medicare fraud, authorities said.
The U.S. Justice Department said in a release Suresh Chand, 46, of Warren, Mich., is to serve three years of supervised release following his prison term.
Chand had pleaded guilty in September to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and one count of conspiracy to launder money.
Federal authorities said that from about January 2003 to March 2007, Chand — who owned Continental Rehab Services Inc. — and co-conspirators submitted claims to the Medicare program totaling more than $18 million for physical and occupational therapy services that were not provided. Medicare paid about $8.5 million on those claims.
One co-conspirator, Dr. Jose Castro-Ramirez, was found guilty March 10 of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, healthcare fraud and money laundering for his role in the conspiracy. His sentencing is set for June 29.
Myth ain’t no conservative. Getting elected in Mass is proof enough. And then there is his record...
FReegards, DB!
socialism/communism ALWAYS ends bad. Anyone who says they didn’t know how it would turn out is either dumb or delusional.
Criminal healthcare fruad case that were investigated and prosecuted under the Bush Administration are now coming to an end.
Obama promises that he will diligently investigate healthcare fruad under his new healthcare scheme. I doubt it. Most of the fraudsters are Obama voters.
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 12:00am
S. Fla. residents charged in $13.6M health care fraud
South Florida Business Journal
Six South Floridians have been charged in a $13.6 million health care fraud scheme involving a Miami-area HIV infusion clinic.
The 16-count indictment, returned on March 30 and unsealed on Wednesday, charges the six with submitting $13.6 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare for services that allegedly were provided at T&R Rehabilitation Clinic in Miami, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Charged were Modesto De La Vega, 58; Rolando Nogueira, 48; Dr. Joaquin Vega, 73; Gladis Badia, 39; Jose Nogueira, aka Tony Nogueira, 52; and Victoria De La Vega, 59.
Modesto De La Vega, Dr. Joaquin Vega, Gladis Badia and Victoria De La Vega were taken into custody Wednesday morning. Ronald and Jose Nogueira are considered fugitives, according to a news release.
According to the indictment, Rolando Nogueira owned and operated T&R, while Modesto De La Vega operated T&R’s HIV infusion practice.
Rolando Nogueira and Modesto De La Vega allegedly billed Medicare for HIV infusion therapy services that were medically unnecessary and were never provided. In addition, Modesto and Victoria De La Vega allegedly paid kickbacks to Medicare beneficiaries in return for statements that they had received the treatments when they had not. The indictment also alleges that Jose Nogueira managed T&R fraudulent HIV infusion operation.
Dr. Vega allegedly submitted Medicare claims for the medically unnecessary infusion treatments. Badia, a medical assistant at T&R, is alleged to have prepared the documentation to make it appear that the injection and infusion treatments billed to Medicare were medically necessary and provided when they were not.
Since its inception in March 2007, Strike Force operations in seven districts have obtained indictments of more than 500 individuals who collectively have falsely billed the Medicare program for about $1.1 billion.
His ego won’t let him, which is one of my many issues with the guy - the world revolves around him.
I think it was great that some state tried Romneycare, because that’s how you prove what won’t work. States SHOULD be allowed to implement different medical insurance/health concepts, so we can see what works and what doesn’t.
Without Romneycare, I don’t think Scott Brown would ever have won election. IT was the failure of Romneycare that convinced the citizens of Mass. to oppose Obamacare by electing a Republican.
uh...Mitt....maybe that shows you guys should NOT EXPERIMENT WITH OUR HEALTH!!!
And the man thinks he’s presidential material. I’m way past fed up with politicians—who cliam to be smarter than we are—saying they didn’t know a bad idea was a bad idea.
And in this case there was plenty of information out there demonstrating that big government-run so-called health programs do not work. European economies are fracturing under the weight of state health care and so is the Canadian system.
Who the heck is this guy kidding? Hello Romney. Are you in there, I ask, as I tap his forehead.
Some much more than others...
What do I care if Obama wants to tie his health plan to Romneys.
I don’t like Romney either. They are both foul pieces of excrement in my book.
If he wins in the primary, you can know for sure that the game was rigged by the PTB.
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