Is Medicare the Real Target of ‘Health Care Reform?’

Nobody outside the inner halls of Congress really knows what’s going on in the negotiations on health care “reform. Every now and then, someone emerges from the formerly smoke-filled rooms and throws another 2,000 or so page “bill” out into the public and then disappears to continue talks to carve up one-sixth of the nation’s economy.

But we do know some of the critical unforgiving numbers. And we have strong reason to suspect that radical changes to Medicare Part E (as in Medicare for Everybody) is the real endgame, whatever the interim steps are called: public option, cooperatives, or mandated Insurance Exchanges.

We have the unmentionable truth that Medicare is insolvent. And the common dogma that Medicare is efficient, popular, and impregnable. Is it a Hegelian thesis and antithesis? With the synthesis being to throw the whole rest of the system, which is also allegedly bankrupting the country, into Medicare?

Are our leaders stark, raving mad? Or diabolically clever?

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Tags: bernie madoff, complete lives system, cooperatives, david walker, ezekiel emanuel
Posted Nov 22nd 2009 at 8:31 am in Congress, Healthcare, Politics | 3487086 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jorient/2009/11/22/is-medicare-the-real-target-of-health-care-reform/Is+Medicare+the+Real+Target+of+%27Health+Care+Reform%3F%272009-11-22+15%3A31%3A46Dr.+Jane+Orient

Truth and Consequences of Health Care Reform

The health care reform bill (HR 3962) that just passed the House of Representatives is bad on so many levels it is difficult explain. As it stands, it will destroy the doctor-patient relationship and change the practice of medicine as we know it.

We have one of the finest health care systems in the world. It has been built on a foundation of choice. Doctors were free to choose the care that they deem necessary to treat their patients, and patients were free to seek the medical care of their choice. Initially, the foundation was shaken by the rise of the managed care system with capitation. However, over the past 10 years, capitated plans which limit access to specialists have given way to the rise in power of insurance companies. They have used their anti-trust exemption to craft a system that has used monopoly to increase profits on the backs of both doctors and patients.

Unfortunately, the House does not address necessary changes that would lead to meaningful reform, such as breaking the monopoly strangle-hold that insurance companies enjoy, reigning in the enormous profits of the pharmaceutical industry, tort reform, or crafting a healthcare system based on wellness and prevention and not the management of disease. Instead HR 3962 creates a layer of government bureaucracy that inserts itself between the doctor and the patient by creating a national health commissioner and task forces that will evaluate and decide everything from what medications a physician is allowed to prescribe to a patient, to what surgery will be approved, to what outcomes will be expected for a particular medical condition.

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Tags: complete lives system, doctor patient relationship, government health care, health care reform, health commissioner
Posted Nov 15th 2009 at 4:37 pm in Congress, Healthcare, Obama, Politics | 3137064 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/egeorge/2009/11/15/truth-and-consequences-of-health-care-reform/Truth+and+Consequences+of+Health+Care+Reform2009-11-15+23%3A37%3A13Dr.+Elaina+++George