New surveys of doctors are showing the number of physicians who are refusing to accept new Medicare patients is at an all time high. Low reimbursement rates for the government-run insurance program are prompting doctors to focus on more profitable patients with other payment methods. ObamaCare’s $500 billion in across-the-board Medicare cuts will cause the problem to worsen significantly.
The Democrats promised to include a “doc fix” in ObamaCare to prevent doctors’ payments under Medicare from being cut, then pulled the “doc fix” to make ObamaCare’s financial projections look better, and now — with ObamaCare already using every obvious offset — can’t come up with the funds for something that would otherwise have had wide bipartisan support.
Though President Obama has repeatedly asserted that he is opposed to instituting British-style, government-run health care in America, his nomination of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under ObamaCare suggests otherwise. Dr. Berwick has continually professed his “love” for a British health-care system that doesn’t remotely offer the high-level quality of care received in the United States.
“The grossly misleading, full-color propaganda brochures that the Obama administration has been sending out to seniors at taxpayer expense don’t seem to have swayed many minds — at least not in the direction that the administration would want.”
“Can we (meaning the government) use statistics on Medicare spending to force the health care system in general, and Medicare providers in particular, to deliver more efficient, higher-quality care?…The weight of the evidence I believe is fairly clear: No, we cannot.”
“As a practicing physician with more than 25 years of experience, and as a former business owner in the health care sector, I’d suggest this new PR campaign is grounded in politics rather than reality.”
The Administration is touting new $250 checks for seniors who hit the Medicare Part D coverage gap. But the State of Vermont is arguing that if the money is to defray drug costs, and not just a political giveaway, then they should be receiving those checks for the seniors who get their drugs paid for by the state Medicaid program. “The dust-up over rebate checks and who should receive them underscores the challenges of the federal-state partnership in health reform’s implementation. While rules and regulations are written within the Beltway, most of the heavy-lifting, in terms of implementation, rests with state governments.”
HHS Secretary Sebelius wrote a letter to Medicare Advantage insurers and threatened the companies not to increase costs or decrease benefits for seniors. Since ObamaCare includes $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage, it will be nearly impossible for insurers not to cut benefits or raise costs for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, and Democrats are maneuvering to avoid taking the blame.
“The New York Times reports President Obama will begin a new media effort Tuesday designed to convince skeptical American voters that Obamacare is a good thing….Kicking off the propaganda push is “a nationally televised question-and-answer session” with seniors where the administration will highlight a $250 Medicare Part D rebate check. Yet relatively few seniors will actually receive the check.”
After much discussion about the need to bend the cost curve down, and Democratic assurances that ObamaCare would do just that, a report by the Medicare Chief Actuary has predicted that costs will in fact rise – estimating that the health care overhaul will actually increase health care spending by $311 billion over the next decade.