The Path We Are On
Current law requires:
- Medicare to slash physician fees by 25 percent next January (under the BBA).
- Additional (ObamaCare-required) cuts to physician fees so severe that by 2030, Medicare will be paying doctors 60 percent less than private health insurance plans (and nearly one-third less than Medicaid pays!).
- ObamaCare-mandated reductions in payments to hospitals so drastic that hospital prices for both Medicare and Medicaid will be around half those paid by private health insurers by the year 2040.
- Eventually, payment reductions to hospitals will mean they are paid 61 percent less by Medicare and Medicaid than by private health insurers; physicians eventually will be paid 74 percent less under Medicare than private insurance.
More from Chris Conover.
This cost-control scheme is devilishly clever! By lowering the fees Medicare pays doctors and hospitals, Medicare will save taxpayers big bucks! Not only will Medicare save by paying less for each service performed, but it will also save by rationing care. This is because Medicare fees will be so low that many seniors will be unable to find a doctor who will treat them.
This has got to be a huge wake-up call for those still believing that this reform is going to benefit anyone at this point. A $6.2 trillion addition to our already skyrocketing deficit that could have been directed towards the creation of more jobs to those people in the franchising inductry losing their jobs due tot this law, or those physicians and medical advisers struggling to make a living after this regulation was passed. I don’t understand why people still continue to support this reform. It brings nothing but bad news every day!
“As the GAO puts it: ‘Under either set of assumptions, these simulations show that the federal budget is on an unsustainable fiscal path driven on the spending side by rising health care costs and the ageing of the population.’
Things go to hell in a hand-basket under either the alternative or baseline extended scenario. It is merely when we arrive at the gates of hell that differs.”
Agree with Studebaker and would add that whenever government runs a health care system the bureaucrats eventually find that it is less expensive to let people die than to treat them.
This just demonstrates how certain things that sound great in principle does not play out that well in reality. Yes, we all want health coverage, but we have to pay for it too, this is something we haven’t seem to fully digest yet.
Good thing labor supply elasticity will allow for Doctors to adjust.
When was the last time bureaucrats ever actually produced an efficient model for anything?
“Current policy is unsustainable”, according to a Treasury report. Agreed!! This is getting out of control.
This goes to show how inconsistent and unsustainable their predictions are. They are just a bunch of broken promises. So much for wanting to lower deficit and spending and promote growth. Nonesense!
Wasn’t this reform all about providing more jobs? Lowering costs? Increasing quality? Improving access to care? Providing valuable services to senior groups? Not only have they not followed through with what they promised, but they have created such a huge financial burden at a national level that’s going to cost EVERYONE thousands of dollars, even to those who wanted nothing to do with it in the first place.
The Liberal Press will make sure that Obama is successfully implemented, and that the true facts of Obamacare will never be known, until the poison has been distributed and we are all told to drink. This is the lowest point I can remember in American history and that’s saying alot since I lived through Vietnam. I USED to be a Democrat but these Democrats have taken it upon themselves to stab Senior Citizens in the back by taking their benefits away (six hundred billion dollars in the next ten years!) and giving the money in Obamacare so that the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals can profit. The Democrats are working hard to deconstruct our health care system by taking responsibility away from doctors and giving it to nurses. All of this, of course, is in the guise of “improving health care.”. Well, I think I know what all of this means, we cant afford quality care anymore, and anyway, there will not be enough doctors to provde it, so send out people who have a third of their training, so that we feel like we’re getting medical care, herd all the cattle together so that the insurers can ratchet down the screws on everyone and ration care…and at the same time increasing profits for insurers. Accountable Care Organizations are just another for the HMO which no one wanted 20 years ago. I will NEVER vote for another Democrat again!