Squeezing the Providers
This is Jim Capretta at National Review Online:
The big Medicare cuts in the president’s plan come from across-the-board payment-rate reductions. In particular, the president wants to cut the inflation update for hospitals, nursing homes, and others by half a percentage point every year, in perpetuity. On paper, this change produces huge long-run savings. But it does nothing to control the underlying cost of treating patients. It just pays everyone less, without regard to patient need or quality of care. The chief actuary of the program has said repeatedly that these cuts are completely unrealistic for these very reasons. If implemented, he expects they would drive one in five facilities into serious financial distress. And yet [Peter] Orszag and [Nancy-Ann] DeParle want us to believe these savings can be counted to finance the president’s massive entitlement promises.
And this is backed by the AMA?
John, I think you have said more than once that the left only knows two ways to control health care costs: ration care and squeeze the providers. This is the squeezing part. The rationing part will follow.
When the Democrats are on the Sunday morning talk shows tlking about how all this is going to save money they never mention how it is going to affect the doctors or the patients they treat.
This reminds me of the mark to market problems that Enron had. It’s one thing if you pick the numbers out of thin air. It’s another if you’re forced to reconcile them with reality.