KOP,
Thanks for showing how the social progressive liberal idiots in the politburo will promise anything to buy votes in order to stay in power.
Health Care is NOT a RIGHT!... It's not in the Constitution...
"WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, ESTABLISH JUSTICE, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general welfare, and SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO
OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY, do ORDAIN and ESTABLISH this Constitution for
the United States of America."
Nor is it in the Bill of Rights!
If you look carefully at the text of both the Senate and House versions of this POS... and you listen to the propaganda from the State sponsored media, you'll see and hear where they will "Squeeze more than $500 Billion in savings from Medicare Improvements."
True, Medicare is a bloated failure and there are clear economies that could be accrued with real leadership... Unfortunately this "Squeeze" that tax cheat and Ways and Means chair idiot Wrangle talked about will mean doctors and hospitals will get paid less per procedure and this will lead to same-day Walk-in Crawl-out birthing or major surgeries and a major shortage of doctors who will realize they can make a better living as veterinarians.
I've taken the liberty of responding to this post for those who didn’t read my last on this topic and the folks I know. I've also used most of the following in faxes and email to my Congressional Representative idiot and the two idiot Senators from Virginia.
We do need health care reform and we do need to offer constructive suggestions. The real question is to whom do we make these recommendations to and whom can we trust to carry them out? Yes Medicare has been a godsend to many... albeit only on one hand. On the other hand, it's been a nightmare to other recipients and the future of its unfunded obligations is frightening.
IMHO, Medicare is also a classic example of what we don't need more of in another Government run entitlement program. It's larded with bureaucracy yet it's being used as a pattern for the administration's goal of Government provided health care. Medicare is fraught with misuse, abuse, fraud, and a tangle of bureaucratic red tape that confounds beneficiaries and providers alike... Providers that get paid within 30 days after billing to Medicare are as numerous as horse feathers.
On top of that... Medicare is already rationing health care to its beneficiaries. While that is not necessarily bad, it offers a perspective that few really know about or understand.
I offer the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) plan for cost reduction in home oxygen for over a million Medicare beneficiaries suffering from COPD over the next 4 years illustrated in the chart below.
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If you read the chart carefully you’ll see that there's a reduction in cost accrued primarily through the use of oxygen concentrators over compressed oxygen...
However, what is most disturbing is the dark side of this chart where they accrue the majority of the cost savings through a reduction in the actual number of Medicare beneficiaries using home oxygen each year.
You can read this part of the chart any number of ways, but none bring any comfort…
The bottom line should be clear… Plan on even more rationing with government run health care. The government is rationing health care now!
If they’re allowed to continue the present plan, the CMS will reduced Medicare coverage for home oxygen for senior citizens suffering from COPD by 97% in just 4 years. That's a reduction in home oxygen expenses from $1,698,942,207 in 2009 down to $51,623,840 in 2013.
Can we use a little simple math and some common sense here? What will happen when roughly 78 million more boomers become Medicare recipients over the next 17 years? Dr. Dawson, y ou're a physician, please tell us there will be enough primary care physicians to go around when there isn't enough now and there's no plan or incentives to generate more? What happens when present medical system gets flooded with the trumped up figure of over 40 million more government provided health care recipients and the number of primary care physicians remains the same or declines?
And… While this is happening, the taxpayer funded S-CHIP will provide $9.9 Billion worth of “free” medical insurance in FY 2010 to children of low-income parents… In some cases up to the age of 19 depending on the State… (See H.R. 2 entitled ‘‘An Act to amend title XXI of the Social Security Act to extend and improve the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and for other purposes.’’ - January 29, 2009). I've read it... The other purposes it makes me sick, but Medicare will not cover treatment for this sickness.
Want to guess how many of these children are anchor babies born to illegal immigrants???
I found an estimate that’s as good as any… Using the March 2005 Current Population Survey, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated in 2006, there were 3 million U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants in the U.S.
The way I see it, the social progressive liberals in the politburo don’t really care about us old folks... They just want to stay in office and in power...
It also appears the CMS cost reduction plan for home oxygen therapy reflects the handy work of tax cheat Tom Daschle who said, “health-care reform will not be pain free.” “Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them.”
That means we… the elderly, will bear the brunt. This must be terribly frightening to COPD sufferers who can do little for themselves without supplemental oxygen… and for the rest of us for that matter, when you consider the 78 million more baby boomers coming into Medicare with a shortage of primary care physicians.
The dirty little secret is the social progressive liberals in the politburo would rather pander to children of low-income parents as potential voters using the taxpayer’s money for S-CHIP rather than on the old folks… “hoping of course, ” these children will be more likely to vote the liberal ticket when they reach voting age…
Unfortunately the idiots on the right side of the isle haven’t been able to stop this egregiousness…
GAO assessed our Nation's social-insurance programs and estimated last year that the unfunded obligations for Medicare and Social Security alone totaled almost $41 trillion. That sum, equivalent to $352,000 per U.S. household, is the present-value shortfall between the growing cost of entitlements and the dedicated revenues intended to pay for them over the next 75 years.
So where do we go from here? We've got a rogue Congress hell bent on spending us into generational debt with so many expanded social entitlement programs and pork the Treasury can't borrow enough money to make ends meet so it now prints it at the fastest rate in history. The deficit is already at $1 Trillion dollars and if you connect the dots, it will be much higher by the end of the fiscal year... We now owe the equivalent of a quarter of our entire GDP to foreign debt... read China and Japan as the biggest holders of US Treasury notes...
We also have a President that has failed to honor his promises of transparency in government with more Tsars than any other president or the Russians and all with no accountability for their actions or oversight by the politburo... Where are the Bolsheviks when we need them? The president has also failed give to give us 5 days to read and comment on legislation passed by Congress before he signs it into public law.
The promises he has kept only serve as an example of what we were told to fear during his election campaign... They clearly show him to be a Marxist trained community organizer steeped in liberation theology and the most radical left wing president in the history of our great Nation.
With the help of the idiots in the politburo, this administration is executing the Cloward-Piven strategy (Google it) with flawless accuracy and frightening speed using Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. If they are allowed to continue at their present rate, they will destroy capitalism, our economy, our Constitution, and relegate the greatest Nation in history the world to a third-world nation status in 4 years.
I'm not a doctor and I'm not a lawyer, and I'm for sure not into that "Hopey Changey" thing. I'm just a conservative old retired Naval Officer and fighter pilot with too many night carrier landings and over 24 years of proud service to our great Nation.
In the last 12 months, I've watched my life savings and property value drop 30% and my 401k/IRA shrink to a 301k. I'm also the kind of guy that downloads and reads legislation like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 a.k.a. the Porkulus bill, and the Crap on Trade carbon tax bill that will let buffoons like Al Gore make billions by trading frozen flatulence faster than Bernie Madoff with even more disastrous results.
I also read the latest GAO and CBO reports on our economy. I know the folks at GPO who run the "getdoc.cgi" download site that holds all the legislation that we're supposed to have 5 days to read and comment on prior to being signed into law... And, they know me on a first name basis.
Folks... unless you've read it and done a key word search to total them up, you have no idea of the number of amendments to other existing statutes and public law the ARRA of 2009 a.k.a. Porkulus bill made... I'll tell you... there were 412 amendments to existing code and the idiots that voted for it never read it... or debated it... Hell... They didn't even write it… Lobbyists for their major contributors wrote it for them.
I don't have all the answers, but I do have a few suggestions:
1. The first thing I suggest is demanding some common sense from our elected officials including the possession of sufficient remedial math skills to write a balanced budget. And, if our elected officials don't deliver on that simple task, advise them to seek employment elsewhere rather than run for reelection.
In the mean time, we need to make a list of the politburo members that need to be weeded out of our government. Let's start by selecting the idiots that committed the most egregious act of voting for bills like HR 1 The ARRA of 2009 without reading or debating them.
They get voted out of office first if for no other reason than failing to uphold their Oath of Office... They have become the domestic enemies of the constitution they swore to protect. And, if those guilty of this egregious offense reside on the right side of the isle... they go too.
That's my common sense Step 1 suggestion and it sets the stage for the rest of my suggestions:
2. Our Nation has a major shortage of Primary Care Physicians now... Adding over 40 million uninsured to government run healthcare is a sure recipe for a disaster in healthcare of Chernobyl proportions. Suggested solution: Offer every incentive possible to educate and train more Primary Care Physicians, Physician's Assistants, and RNs, starting first and preferably with citizens from the United States. Medical students graduate from Medical Schools now with student loans averaging over $140K. If necessary, the Government should pick up the tab for these loans in return for 5 years directed service as a Primary Care Physician in a geographic region where they are needed most.
3. Malpractice insurance costs are out of sight... Rather than put a bounty on slip & fall ambulance chasing lawyers... (That's not a bad idea as long as you bring them back alive.)... We need meaningful medical tort reform. Until we have it, what little flow of new doctors we have now will be away from primary care practices in small towns and over to the big medical centers where group malpractice insurance is less expensive.
4. Reexamine and make necessary changes to the medical fee for service system that drives new doctors into the more lucrative specialties and enables them to charge more for time spent with patients thanks to the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) billing codes used by medical insurance companies to charge for each procedure. Want to hazard a guess what will happen to the cost of these procedures when the “squeeze” hits?
5. Rewrite the tax laws to give everyone the same tax exempt status on medical insurance premiums enjoyed by employees of large businesses as well as Federal and State government employees. Provide a means tested tax credit worth up to 25% of the annual health care insurance premiums for low-income families and individual citizens.
6. Maintain our "Freedom of Choice" when it comes to selecting market driven health care plans. Insurance cooperatives may be a good idea compared to any new government option where the umpire works for the biggest major league team owner of the all, the US Government and we would have the farthest thing from a level playing field with respect to options... After all, we have Government provided health care now in Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA.
7. If we want a best of bread or best practice health plan as a pattern, why not use the Safeway health care plan that has held costs flat since 2005 while other health care plans climbed 38%. The key to achieving these savings is health-care plans that reward healthy behavior. As a self-insured employer, Safeway designed just such a plan in 2005 and has made continuous improvements each year. Their results have been remarkable and employees holding these plans like them... Quit smoking for a year and your insurance premiums go down. Lower your cholesterol levels and your insurance premiums go down. Lose weight and the premiums drop even further. For more details see the following link...
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There are obviously many other common sense suggestions that would help... If we could accomplish just a few of them, we as a Nation would be several steps closer to meaningful health care reform.
Meanwhile, the White House and the idiots in the politburo have turned up the PR volume over the last two days after rolling out their latest drafts Universal Health Care plan... What you will not hear in all this propaganda is that major segments of the private healthcare industry will be turned over to civil servants belonging to government unions…
If you thought dealing with a private medical insurance company was hard… Wait until you start dealing with professional bureaucrats with no motivation to serving the public… only to maintaining their protected jobs…
Remember… There’s no such thing as a free lunch… All these new surtaxes start in the year the Bush Tax Cuts end and they come on top of existing taxes… The big problem with the new surtax is simple… It’s not going to be enough… So this is only the beginning. … If ends don’t meet… and they will not as even the local DC fish-wrap has done the math showing this will not generate the funds needed to finance obamacare… Sooo... the surtax rates will go up and the AGI bogeys will go down.
Take care, and if you don't tell your congressmen how you feel about all this on a daily basis… BOHICA...
V/R, Batch