To achieve the goal of a universal, single-payer health system, the White House must secure the power it needs by amending the Social Security Act to transfer pivotal controls from Congress to the executive branch.  This transfer of power would ultimately give the President and the majority party, in this case the radical left Obama White House and Pelosi-Reid led progressive Democrats, the authority to frame and manipulate new policy, coverage options, and reimbursements, ultimately reshaping the future US health care system into a something unrecognizable in this country.

The deliberate setup for the White House power grab is built into the each of the health care bills and, if they fail, little-known twin bills called “MedPAC Reform of 2009” are waiting in the wings.  The bills, S.B. 1110 and H.R. 2718, craftily amend the Social Security Act and transfer the Medicare guideline and rule setting processes, from the legislative branch to the executive branch.  These bills offer cover to one another in case one doesn’t pass the House or Senate, respectively.  Remember, Democrats need to gain executive branch authority by amending the Social Security Act over Medicare regulations and physician fee schedules to transform the health care system in a single-payer, socialized system.

More importantly, Medicare’s regulations and physician fee schedules are the keystone to developing payer systems and reimbursement models across the entire health care industry.  And where Medicare goes, insurers follow.

To underscore the far-reaching power, a bulk of the states already reference or utilize the Medicare guidelines and fee schedules in determining policy, coverage, and payment, which impacts certain state-specific plans, including, but not limited to, self-funded plans, automobile insurance payers, and state workers’ compensation funds and plans – affecting even Big Labor.   For the executive branch to have such authority over Medicare regulations with little oversight is alarming.  This raises further issues of the powerful impact these federal mandates could potentially have on the states in stripping them of their own management of their respective insurance industries.

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If you would like a pre-Obama Care window into the possible future of American Health Care–if Democrats in Congress are successful in passing their sweeping health care legislation, you need look no further than government imposed rationing of heart disease prevention in this country. It is a travesty in the making and should demonstrate to everyone the capricious nature of government control over our health care.

I am writing of the Obama Administration’s – regulatory decision – to go ahead with a massive cut in Medicare payments to cardiologists. I emphasize that this is a regulatory decision because it was not made by the Congress legislatively (not that that would be ok) but, instead, it was made by the massive Health and Human Services Department of the US Government. Given the limited resources of the Medicare budget, in order to increase payments to general practitioners (in an effort to attract more such doctors – a good idea), bureaucrats needed to gore somebody’s ox and cardiologists were chosen (a horrible idea).

The decision to do so is astonishing.

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