Not too surprisingly, “CBO gives Obama just what he wanted.” What is surprising is that the headline is not from a conservative political publication but from the front page of a mainstream, left-of-center urban daily newspaper, The Arizona Daily Star.
The President ordered up a $950 billion price tag, and a $100 billion, ten-year reduction in the federal deficit. Presto! The CBO pulled the right number of digits out of the hat, a mere $940 billion price tag and a $138 billion deficit decrease—a giant drop in the gargantuan federal red-ink bucket.
The Democrats admittedly just adjusted the numbers as needed. Is the excise tax on union members’ Cadillac health plans too high? Lower that, and tax seniors’ retirement-plan interest and dividends.
There’s no fix for doctors’ fees, scheduled to be dropped 21% in April unless Congress does something. The CBO said that rolling back that pay cut would cost $208 billion over 10 years. If added back to the health care overhaul bill, it would wipe out all the deficit reduction, leaving the legislation $59 billion in the red.
This did not, by the way, stop AMA president James Rohack, M.D., from sending a message of support on March 19.
Another problem, which might even cause liberals like Oregon’s Peter DeFazio to vote no, is that hospitals in his district will get paid less than others. Changing that, of course, could only increase the deficit, and so can’t, according to the rules, be included in a budget reconciliation measure.
It reminds one of that balloon that proponents of ClintonCare talked about. Squeeze it one place, and it bulges somewhere else. Or to expand an area you have to squeeze another one. Add any more air and it pops the $1 trillion limit.
If enough Congressmen look at the squeezes on medical facilities or taxpayers in their districts, Pelosi’s fragile consensus has to disintegrate.
The CBO’s cost estimate is ludicrous. Amazingly, the CBO’s cost estimate for this legislation only includes the government’s direct costs. It doesn’t include the healthcare industry’s costs to implement those 2700 pages of laws! If enacted, those 2700 pages will be ballooned by enforcing bureaucracies into hundreds of thousands of pages of rules and regulations to further complicate and constipate all aspects of our healthcare economy. Those costs are incalculable, but certainly many times the CBO’s estimates. And soon those costs will come home to roost.
Hopefully, primary care doctors and others won’t jump for the carrot of increased Medicare pay. It will be obvious if an across the board cut of 22 percent occurs followed by a phased in increase for primary care, that reimbursement for them, and especially specialists will be untenable.
A major withdrawal by physicians from government plans should ensue, leaving big groups affiliated with hospitals to try to care for thousands, crowding out other typses of payments.
Physicians have bluffed dropping Medicare for years, and some with guts have done it, but if the big hit comes we will have no choice but to leave the patients for whom we feel so responsible.
It’s clear this bill is not about health care access, quality improvements or cost reduction. This bill is about changing the Enlightenment ideology of the country to that of collectivism – managed by government.
If not, then why wouldn’t cause and effect be considered? For example, employer-based insurance has caused the widespread phenomenon of serious illness-job loss-insurance loss then that pre-existing illness prevents getting other insurance. Yet, employer-based insurance will continue. High costs that severely limit access are caused by insurance and hospital exemption from interstate commerce and anti-trust laws. Yet, these exemptions will remain.
It’s like treating the infection caused by appendicitis with antibiotics instead of appendectomy. It mollifies the effects, just as coercion will, but it’s outcome is just as sad.
The government gets it both ways, bloated bureaucracy sucking off money from the provision of health care, and the power and control to ration medical services being provided. Unlimited money and control for govermnent, death panels for those not politically favored. We either fight this to the death, or die under it. What is likely to the death knell of government health care is cost. America is financially broke, and will soon collapse like Greece. I think that is Obama’s true plan.