Sunday, August 30th, I went to Rep. Jay Inslee’s Town Hall Meeting on Health Care Reform. When you first enter the area you find stacks of printed information titled “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009″. I believe this was the first time I have seen HCR called Choices Act. Anyway, the section on how they are going to pay for HCR got my attention.
That section read as follows:
Paying for Health Care Reform
1. Elimination of health care fraud and abuse:
- $102 billion in savings over 10 years by incorporating productivity adjustments into Medicare payment updates for hospitals which will more accurately aligning Medicare payments with hospital costs
- $110 billion in savings over 10 years by closing the Medicare Part D “donut hole”
- $100 billion in additional savings over 10 years through key delivery systems reforms such as incentives to reduce readmission’s to hospitals and promoting accountable care organizations
- $156 billion in savings by eliminating over payments to private Medicare Advantage plans over 10 years
2) Tax increases on the wealthiest 1.2% of Americans
My interpretation was that HCR will be payed for by 1) cuts in Medicare and 2) tax increases of the wealthiest Americans. My questions was how can they be cutting such massive amounts in Medicare and fixing Medicare at the same time? It appears to me that instead of fixing existing problems with Medicare, they are taking money out of medicare to pay for those currently uninsured. There was nothing in the information packet that told me how they were saving Medicare, or fixing the existing problems with Medicade, VA and health care for Indians.
When discussing this with a liberal I was told that I didn’t understand, he suggested I read the following:
The Kaiser Foundation has a summary of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009″ (H.R. 3200) It shows a reduction in Medicare spending of $538.5 billion and an increase in Medicare spending of $320.4 billion. The net reduction (the difference between these two numbers) is $218 billion.
Included in the $218 billion reduction, is a reduction for Medicare Advantage of $172 billion over 10 years. So the actual reduction in traditional Medicare (not including Medicare Advantage) is $46 billion over 10 years. This is less than 1% of spending on Medicare over the same period.
Maybe it’s just me, but this still does not make sense. I can’t find anything that tells me how they plan to save Medicare, remember Obama keeps telling us that Medicare is going broke. What happens over the next 4 years when we start adding millions of baby boomers when they hit Medicare system? So they are only going to cut Medicare by $46 billion and somehow they are making Medicare better and have enough money left over to pay for insurance for 47 million uninsured? That plus taxing the rich. No wonders nobody trusts the government! Obama tells us that we can keep the same doctors under his plan … yet try to find a Doctor now that will take straight Medicare patients! When Obama cuts the Advantage Plan that will leave 10+ million American without the extra medical coverage from that program, what is the governments plan to help these people?
What else are we supposed to believe when Obama appoints yet another Czar, Ezekiel Emmanuel, health care adviser —who is a proponent of the Complete Lives System, which puts values on lives based mostly by age. The idea that we can help 4 people that are 30 years old rather one person who is 70 years old, is more cost effective and better use of government $$$$! That certainly brings no comfort to Senior Citizens and it can’t help but lead to rationed health care as we flood the health care community with baby boomers over the next 4 years and no longer have enough Doctors or Nurses to treat patients.
Prior to Emmanuel, the President nominated Tom Daschle, to be secretary of health and human services. He withdrew as the nominee on Feb. 3, 2009, because he had failed to pay more than $128,000 in taxes. Daschel wrote the book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis . Daschle’s plan suggests the government create a Federal Health Board, modeled on the Federal Reserve Board that manages monetary policy. The basic idea is to create an institution, run by experts, that answers to the government but is “largely insulated from the politics and passions of the moment,” he writes. (Appointed by the President, but not political and holds subjective views?) Ultimately, Daschle’s talk of comparative effectiveness research is just a smokescreen for a plan to establish bureaucratic centralized health care rationing.
If we are unable to find anything clearly defined in the Health Care Reform bill as to how the bill will be paid for, other than taking from the elderly to give to the young, and taxing the wealthy …. and we see the philosophy of the 2 men he has appointed to the position of Health Care Czar or Secretary of Health and Human Services, what are we left to think?
This coming week, Obama will be repackaging and selling his newest version of Health Care Reform, in yet another speech to the country. I’m anxious to see if he actually offers anything different or can provide explanations that make sense to Americans. Obama and Pelosi have made it clear that they intend to pass a Health Care Reform bill, what ever it takes!
Nearly 7 in 10 adults polled by CBS News say they are confused about how healthcare reforms would work.
Sixty percent of those surveyed said President Barack Obama has not explained his healthcare plans clearly, and 67 percent said they found the reform proposals confusing.
Only 36 percent of respondents believe that the government would do a better job of providing healthcare insurance than would private insurers.
Confusion over healthcare reform could explain why Americans are not eager to see it become law. When respondents in a Rasmussen Reports poll were asked if they would prefer passage of the healthcare bill now in the House or nothing at all this year, 54 percent chose nothing at all. Only 35 percent supported the bill, and 11 percent were unsure.
Rasmussen also found that among those Americans who already have healthcare insurance, only 43 percent believe the claim that they will be able to keep their current insurance plan after the proposed law is enacted.
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