Who needs death panels?
The WSJ today succinctly illustrates the morass of government healthcare in a Review & Outlook column titled The War On Specialists. In an effort to both reduce costs and increase the number of General Practitioners, the Administration is making some changes to Medicare. To that end our enlightened politicians are taking money away from medical specialists such as cardiologist and oncologist so they have more to pay to General Practitioners.
“The 2010 rules, which will be finalized next month, visit an 11% overall cut on cardiology and 19% on radiation oncology. They’re targets only because of cost: Two-thirds of morbidity or mortality among Medicare patients owes to cancer or heart disease.”
Think about that concept for a minute. What chronic diseases do you think affect Medicare recipients the most? Why would one de-fund the very specialties that are needed the most by recipients? The reason for these cuts offered by Administration is “cost savings” but one could reasonably ask if Alan Grayson’s attack wasn’t directed at the wrong party! Who needs death panels when the government forces cardiologist out of the program by paying them less while at the same time reducing what Medicare will pay for tests like echocardiograms by 42% making them much less likely to be used.“The way Medicare works is that Congress decides each year how much it wants to spend on doctors, period. If one area of medicine receives a larger slice of this pie, another must accept a smaller one. The portion sizes are determined using a formula known as Relative Value Units, or RVUs. Medicare assigns an RVU to each of 7,500 billable services-in 2008, a colonoscopy earned 5.64 of these units, a hip replacement 37.66. Then it multiplies a doctor’s total RVUs by some dollar factor, currently about $36, and cuts a check.”(this is the Marxist “fixed pie” approach. - r108)
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When President Obama complains about the fact that some insurance companies make a profit - remember that it is those insurance companies that are helping foot the bill for the failed “public option” known as Medicare/Medicaid. The system that is being established doesn’t reward a success or even measure it in human terms. The only thing that matters is the bottom line, the dollar cost to the politicians in Washington.
There is no free lunch, no matter what the politicians say. Albeit imperfect, our current system is vastly superior to a single payer system because quality care is still rewarded and the medical consumer has a choice. The citizens of this country wouldn’t accept a one party political system, why would they consider the equivalent for their healthcare? A single payer system is tyranny with a fancy name.
Obama will transform the entire Medicare/Medicaid system into one big “death panel”. It’s just the way govt works, people.
If central economic planning and govt ownership and control of goods and services worked, the Soviet Union would be the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world.
