Forum Post: Dems’ Medicare lie - Why Granny should be Afraid...
Posted 11 years ago on Aug. 23, 2012, 9:48 p.m. EST by vitvitvit
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Dems’ Medicare lie
By BETSY McCAUGHEY
Posted: 11:06 PM, August 20, 2012
President Obama is criss-crossing the country, warning that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would “end Medicare as we know it.” Attention, New York’s 3 million seniors: Don’t be fooled. It’s the Obama health law that destroyed Medicare, though the impact will not be felt for another year or more.
Scientific evidence indicates that the changes made by ObamaCare will shorten the lives of some elderly hospital patients and make it hard for Medicare enrollees to get treated. The only thing left of Medicare is the membership card.
ObamaCare cuts future funding for Medicare by over half a trillion dollars in the next 10 years. Most cuts are made by slashing what hospitals, physicians, hospice care and dialysis centers will be paid. Doctors will get less to care for a senior than for a patient on Medicaid and only a third of what a doctor will be paid to care for a patient with private insurance. New York, the hospital capital of the nation, will be especially hard hit.
Last year, Richard Foster, chief actuary for Medicare, warned Congress that seniors will have difficulty finding doctors and institutions to accept Medicare. Doctors who do accept Medicare will not want to spend time doing procedures such as hip replacements, when the pay is so low. Yet the law bars them from providing the care you want for an extra fee. You’re trapped.
Foster also warned that within a decade, 40 percent of health-care institutions could be forced to operate at a loss. New York hospitals are bracing for the hit.
When hospitals run in the red, they can employ fewer nurses and buy less diagnostic equipment.
Cutting hospital payment rates has been tried before, with deadly results. When Medicare cut payments to hospitals in 1997, hospitals hit with the biggest cuts saw death rates for elderly heart-attack patients go up relative to higher-spending hospitals. A $1,000 reduction in what hospitals could spend on a heart-attack patient led to a 6 percent to 8 percent higher death rate, due to fewer nurses and other staff, according to a 2011 National Bureau of Economic Research paper.
Apply that to the Obama health law. In 2019, according to Medicare’s actuaries, the program will spend $1,431 less per enrollee than if the health law had not been enacted. But that’s on average. The one in five enrollees who will need hospital care that year could see it fall by $6,000 or more.
When partisans for ObamaCare say cutting hospital payments will not impact care, don’t believe it. Cuts will result in fewer elderly patients surviving their hospital stays.
Seniors also risk losing access to colonoscopies and other preventative services. The Obama health law empowers the secretary of Health and Human Services to eliminate preventative services for seniors based on the recommendations of the US Preventative Services Task Force (the panel that recommended women over 74 not get routine mammograms). A half page later the secretary is empowered to “increase” preventative services for Medicaid recipients. The winners and losers are clear.
As of October 2012, hospitals that spend the least on seniors will get rewarded; those that spend more will get whacked with demerits. The government calls it “efficiency,” but it’s stingy care.
Data from all hospitals in California show that seniors treated in hospitals providing lower-intensity, lower-cost care have a higher risk of dying instead of recovering and going home. Yet, the Obama administration is pressuring all hospitals to imitate the low-spending ones.
The election should not turn on the lie that Obama will protect Medicare as we’ve known it. Unless the Obama health law is repealed, seniors will have difficulty getting the care they need, and some will die sooner.
Repeal is the key issue in the presidential election, not the merits of Paul Ryan’s alternative proposals. If the Romney-Ryan ticket wins, these proposals will go through many changes during the lawmaking process. But ObamaCare is already the law, and it’s dangerous.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and author of “The Obama Health Law: What It Says and How to Overturn It.”
Scientific evidence? Nope.
What is the problem with US healthcare? The statistics for healthcare speak loudly. The United States spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country. Almost twice as much as the next country, Norway. Are we twice as healthy as the rest of the world? No.Wikipedia and CNN report our life-expectancy ranks 38th. The CIA Factbook ranks our life-expectancy at 50th. Our infant-mortality or survival rate is ranked at 34th. These numbers must be acceptable to those who want to repeal Obamacare. Being in 34th, or 38th or 50th place in health services places us far behind the European Union, Japan, Indonesia, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Cayman Islands, Bosnia-Herzegovina and dozens of other countries.
Healthcare for profit is the problem. There is the illusion that free enterprise made America great. The flagships of the American economy had been capitalism, credit and consumerism. The American automobile industry is ailing. The financial sector is hobbled by fraud, deregulation, incompetence and corruption. And so is the US healthcare system. The US spends over a $2 trillion annually for healthcare and yet millions of Americans have no healthcare coverage at all.
We also produce a lot of the new drugs, procedures and medical equipment that further medicine. We take on a lot of the research and development. That all costs money.
How much we spend on health care has a lot to do with our lifestyles also, not just the cost of medicine.
I can assure you, Obamacare will only make things worse. Any time a government bureaucrat gets involved in anything, it gets more expensive, there's less of it, and the quality goes down.
Since you don't like profit, do you work for free?
Price discovery isn't working if we're paying twice the world average and end up no higher than 34th place. That high technology isn't cost effective. If Americans lived 20% to 200% longer than everyone else it would be more interesting.
The new drugs, procdures and equipment probably cost more and are profitable. The FDA approves many new medications with warning labels, and side effects, that have to be discontinued. Also, many treatments available in other countries are not available in the US because FDA has not and may not approve them.
So what? If you want to stick to old medicine and be bled out by leaches, fine. That doesn't mean everyone does. Americans might live 20% longer if they acted more responsibly in their own lives, but it's none of your business.
Most people would rather have MRIs, advanced cancer treatments and drugs to conquer retroviruses when they get sick. Just worry about yourself and stop worrying about everyone else.
Paying twice the world average cost per capita for 34th place, not even the top 10 or 20, is why healthcare reform is needed.
I hear the interest on the national debt is rising faster than medicare costs
nonsense post
And what's even sadder is that it's the elderly who need care... and we are all elderly; he ripped us all off or more accurately sold our lives for an illusion he hopes will attract the vote. Even the Democrat county execs in NY are all saying this is going to be disastrous.
This is nonsense. Repub medicare plans Ends medicare gaurantee for people under 55. uses vouchers that do not match the mthly premium cost nor keep up with premium increases. Repub plan eliminates the guarantee for people under 55. People who have contributed for a guarantee for decades. Repubsare stealing our money! Repub plan cuts $725Billion from medicare benefits uses it for wealthy tax cuts!
Dems retain the guarantee thewe all aid for through our payroll deductions! Dems have strengthened medicare and extrended it for 8 years! Dems have implemented slower cost growth by charging health corps $70b more each year, and using that money for closing the prescription drug donut hole Bush created!
That is the truth!
Our departing county exec warned of the Medicaid expansion... either way none of this is looking good for the American worker.
You want to support workers.? Protest with OWS! Elect progressives! Vote out anti union, anti medicaid republicans.
It ain't just Republicans... the Dems, now in power in many municipalities, don't want it, either. Not all Democrats are Leftists, not all favor freecare over fiscal irresponsibility.
Repubs have been trying to destroy medicaid since the democrats created it.! The democrats have stood like a stone wall in defense of this great program and the poor that it serves.
Elect progressives, vote out anti union, anti medicaid republicans.
I'm not a Lefty; I'm a Righty. Well, maybe, slightly ambidextrous.
Listen, I'm gonna tell you something... these people you refer to as 1%ers leave their Manhattan offices on Friday afternoon and make a beeline for the Hamptons where they'll do a half mile drive along the beach somewhere, before turning turn up some 1/4 mile winding drive that totally obscures the view of all prying eyes to a ten thousand square foot cottage on the ocean. They'll spend the weekend wafting amongst the dunes, relaxing, eating well, and contemplating the present and the future within the scope of their existence. Many of them are Leftists; it's the new social cool, but all support the party of expedience. They live in worlds entirely isolated; they don't hit the Net to discover your concerns and they don't venture anywhere near the Hood; they'd sooner catch a schooner to the Islands.
These are your "Progressives."
"American" is just so, faux pas.
Sounds pretty ridiculous. What does it matter what someone does for pleasure? What does it matter if they are 1%'r or not?
What matters is what the support! If they hate LGBT, minorities, immigrants, & they attack womens rights, elderly support, if they wanna cut wealthy tax cuts, and weaken regulations if they're against the public option, and expanded Pell grants. then they are conservatives,
And they ARE they enemy
The opposite positions would by progressives. Hamptons, UES, Dumbo. it don't matter where they come from, how much money they have. It's about what you believe.
What do YOU believe.
I believe we have some really sick people in the world (an undeniable fact) that are intent on destroying everything "American" and in an effort to further that cause they have introduced the false positive to install schism where none need exist.
I believe in compromise as an intelligent choice.
I support the Civil Union as a matter of equal rights but I do not support Gay "marriage," in fact, I would say to you that since definition is one of consensus that Gay marriage is NOT possible; it's laughable - call it something else - parriage or whatever, perhaps try another language source but I'm quite sure there is something more applicable. My definition is based on a several hundred year analysis which culminates in a conceptual definition decidedly peculiar to the US.
Nor do I support Gay adoption...
I do not support the unlimited right of women to abortion; the late term abortion is a heinous act. I support "viability" as the only reasonable limit of human tolerance.
I do not support anything that challenges the right of the Roman Catholic to be discriminating in belief; the right of free conscience as the right of religious opinion trumps the right of women to any freely provided emergency contraception.
I am steadfastly against the continued presence of alien residents; deport them all.
I cannot support a minority that steadfastly refuses the self help of assimilation.
I support the aggressive pursuit of our energy resources; American prosperity demands nothing less.
I have very little use for the EPA or an extreme environmentalism that places this burden on the poor.
I believe there is an impression of moral dystopia on the level of sickness that has been allowed to permeate our society that is not truly representative of our society but rather the product of a media sensationalism - humdrum simply does not sell.
What you don't realize is that "Progressive" represents less than 1% of the total population; the new cool is little more than a social presence, it lacks all ethical and economic viability.
Irreconcilable difference, wholly incompatible existence - this may very well place you and I at odds, and so, choose your weapon.
gays help men love men and women love women
caring for each other is essential to species survival
Gays and Lesbians definitely have their place in society - and always have - yes.
We disagree on all these issues. & certainly on how many progressives exist.
Although I won't choose a weapon (that's more war mongering conservative than people loving progressive)
I choose the truth. And as such I cannot lose.
Good luck to you in all your good efforts
I liked your first compromise about civil unions, but then you went off the deep end and showed that the schism that infects America is not manufactured but actually exists.
So what you are really saying is that as long as others don't agree with you, they are feeding the schism that need not exist. It must be great to be on the winning side, as if.
The schism exists; you have just sheltered yourself away from those on the other side, but even though you don't have the same political views as me, in fact i'd say yours are quite radical, I still respect you.
The schism exists, you're right, but not to the height they have attained; I think all of these issues could have been very quickly and easily resolved through intelligent compromise - people are entitled to civility, fairness, an equality. But instead we have a Left and Right that are locked in a life/ death struggle.
Yeah, I have to agree with that.
Dems retain nothing. They say whatever they need to to rationalize the failure-in-chief and his piss poor job.
Democrats defunded medicare by 700 Billion and gave it to Obamacare, a program that people have not paid into versus medicare that has been taken through their paychecks (FICA).
You assholes Rob Peter to pay Paul for more votes.
"assholes"? name calling = weak arguments. I win! Dems slowspending by charging healthcare corps about $70b more per year and use that money to expand benefits (closing prescr. donut hole).
That is the truth. You are not being honest!
Republican plan is to end the guarantee for people under 55 that we all paid for through our payroll deductions. Repubs are stealing our past deductions to give tax cuts to the wealthy, Repubs would cut $700B from medicare to give tax cuts to the wealthy.
Tell the truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRqY0AkrLig
I am absolutely telling the truth.
Republicans are trying to destroy Medicare (and Social Security) as they have since Democrats created these great programs.
Democrats stand like a stonewall in defense of the elderly benefits against the republican onslaught.
Yeah "right" a FLAKESnews commentator.
Like I can believe that.
You got anything from O'Rielly?
Hey idiot, document where his assertions are wrong, or STFU.
He's not running for elected office like the lying magic negro.
Oh my. Racist commentary from you, along with insults?
Keep it up and it likely be you that has to STFU.
Since you insist on being a boob about things I probably shouldn't bother, but here's a link filled with actual truth about health care and the ACA.
BTW. It's FLAKESnews free. Not a lick of BS. Unlike FLAKESnews.
http://wendellpotter.com/
Yep, you democrats sure are racist.
http://elizabethprata.blogspot.com/2008/12/origins-of-barack-magic-negro-flap.html
It's all about usage and context.
You failed on both of those.
Of course, you didn't read the truth either, and provided a link to an end of days conspiracy site..
So it figures.
dont confuse these peole with facts, it doesnt fit their agenda.