In his campaign speeches and recent talk to the AMA, Obama promised that all Americans would “be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves.”
The proposed Kennedy bill, the Affordable Health Choices Act, however, specifically exempts members of Congress and other employees from being pushed into stingy plans with HMO-type controls (section 3116), notes Betsy McCaughey (Wall Street Journal 6/16/09).
Contrary to what many seem to believe, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) is not a public plan. Rather, it offers a wide range of private plans, paid for by the employer—the federal government. Those plans include low-cost, high-deductible plans coupled with health savings accounts.
Ordinary Americans would have to enroll in a “qualified” plan—or else be tracked down and fined (sections 3101 and 6055). We won’t know all the requirements until after the bill gets passed and the Secretary of HHS writes the rules. The language suggests that the plan will require a “medical home” (sections 3101 and 2707). That is likely to be this decade’s version of the HMO gatekeeper, writes McCaughey.
The “payment structure” will be based on “incentives” to “provide the best care, rather than more care.” In other words, an incentive to get paid more by doing less.
Both Obama and Kennedy promise that if you like your plan you can keep it. The question is, how big a fine will you have to pay? The bill sets no limit, but says it will be enough to “accomplish the goal of enhancing participation in qualifying coverage” (section 161).
Obama also promises people that they can keep their doctor. Assuming, of course, that he’s still available on the patient’s plan. Or still in practice at all, after automatic, across-the-board Medicare spending cuts are triggered by failure to meet cost-cutting targets, as proposed by Senator Baucus.
Additional information:
Imagine this: you are ill, and because of your illness you are now a criminal if you refuse to sign up with government medicine. Welcome to the world of President Obama and the new America.
In the old America, you were free politically. No one was required to help you accomplish anything; that was entirely up to you. Want an education? — earn it. Want a job? — find one or make one yourself. Want the product of someone’s labor? — trade for it. Want medical care? — pay for it or ask for charity.
In the new America, you are a slave. Everyone is required to help you accomplish everything; you don’t have to do anything. If you want an education, it’s yours, provided by? — guns pointed at teachers. If you want a job, it’s yours, provided by? — guns pointed at employers in any field. If you want the product of someone’s labor, it’s yours, provided by? — guns pointed at any productive person. If you want medical care, it’s yours, provided by? — guns pointed at physicians.
It has finally come to this. America has become an official nation of thugs with the Congress as a gun pointed at everyone.
Dr . Hurt is right. Betsy McCaughey is right. If prosperity, benevolence, health and happiness are ever to be the conditions for all Americans including doctors and our patients we must be traders.
The moral individual must earn his keep. He must learn that he can only live a human life by producing and trading the values his life requires. The beggar, the moocher, the theif, the immoral man lives as a parasite on the producers and traders. Without them he must parish. Having our government as the grand theif and the distributer of the loot does not alter the facts of reality. Such governments have demonstrated throughout history the catastrophic consequences of their immorality.
Doctors can bring this calamity to a halt by proclaiming our moral right to trade our care on terms we reach by mutual agreement with our patients, free of all government interferrence.
You people are totally off the track, THIS IS WAR and THE GOVERNMEBT AND ALL THE INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE THE ENEMY.
This is a situation that requires the most extreame actions to let these people know that the country can do well without them but not without us. Organize the doctors in this country and stage a GENNERAL STRIKE when only life threatening emergencies get treated. No more bull shit . The scum in washington thyink we are all replacable with PA’s and Nurse Practitioners. A few strikes and they will capitulate as they are all yellow dogs. Stop this charade that we are independant entrepreneurs, we already work for the government. REVOLUTION ! get ride of all politicians including medical ones that for years have been selling us down the river.
Michael Dolin? I couldn’t agree with you more! Physicians MUST organize! They MUST cease being ’sheep’…afraid to speak up and speak out for good over evil. Virtually ALL physician ’societies’ today have placed at their helm–LAWYERS! 90% of Medical Ethics courses are compiled and taught by…LAWYERS and UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS; conspicuously, the ONLY two professions in EVERY state that don’t come under the watchful, tyrranical rule of state Departments of Regulation and Licensing! CMS, private insurers, the moronic FDA and the newest breed of organized crime–Pharmacy Benefit Manager Cartels–intentionally and maliciously prohibit physicians multiple times EVERY DAY from upholding their sacred oaths of the once noble Art of Medicine! The ’status quo’ also precludes ALL conscientious physicians from even abiding by ANY state’s Medical Practice Act! The AMA, with an abysmal one-in-five physician membership rate, represents WHO? And, they are a ‘respected’ voice of medicine WHY? A properly worded federal class action suit would invariably prevail amidst the current United States Supreme Court…yet, here we all sit; ‘doing’ nothing will change nothing!
Doctors should decline treatment for politicians. “I’m sorry, I’m not accepting any more politicians as patients” would do the trick.
Congress is exempting itself from its healthcare plan and crippling private insurance http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=482329.
A comprehensive, free market plan exists that transitions those on government programs to a new plan while private business builds what those on Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP need.
The plan is catastrophic care that is means-tested with a prevention focus. It would be open to all citizens while more private plans are created. That will happen because regulations are drastically reduced and plans sold across state lines. Private plans also get tax credits to enroll the poor and the sick.
The government plan pays for itself and is phased out in favor of private ones.
Unlike ALL the UHC plans, ways to get more doctors and nurses is included without bankrupting people.
Please check it out:
http://www.modernconservative.com/freeandfair.php
[...] “Kennedy Bill Breaks Obama’s Promises,” AAPS News of the Day 6/22/09. [...]