Obamacare Puts Government Run Monopoly on Fast Track Grace-Marie Turner The Detroit News, 8/26/10
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised millions of eyebrows in early March when she told reporters, we have to pass the health reform bill "so that you can find out what is in it." It goes without saying that few, if any, of the federal lawmakers who voted to pass the legislation had any idea of what was lurking in its 2,801 pages. Nevertheless, Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill had a crystal clear vision of its implications. They knew it would put the nation on the fast-track to a government-run, single-payer system. Read more...
Obama Lied, Your Insurance Died Sally C. Pipes The Orange County Register, 8/25/10
"If you like your health care plan," pledged President Barack Obama, "you will be able to keep your health care plan." As the president barnstormed in favor of his health overhaul, that promise was a constant - appearing in speeches, media appearances, and all the administration's literature. It was a lie. Earlier this summer, the White House fessed up. By 2013, according to the administration, eight in 10 employer-sponsored health insurance plans could be gone. Read more...
CBO Gives Us the Complete Picture Five Months Late Keith Hennessey KeithHennessey.com, 8/25/10
Last week CBO released their annual summer baseline update. On page 6 (page 24 of the PDF) is a box titled “The Effects of Major Health Care Legislation on CBO’s Baseline.” It provides an important new data point that was absent when the legislation was being debated. While I disagreed with some of the judgment calls CBO made during the health care debate, on the whole I think they did a good job under difficult circumstances. This missing information, however, was and is a significant failing by the CBO. Unlike with other major legislation, CBO’s scoring of the health laws blended spending increases and tax cuts into a single measure of deficit effects. The final scoring showed that these two bills combined would reduce the budget deficit over the next ten years. Read more...
How Obamacare Empowers the Medicare Bureaucracy: What Seniors and Their Doctors Should Know Clete DiGiovanni, M.D. and Robert Moffit, Ph.D. The Heritage Foundation, 8/24/10
The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (PPACA) is projected to yield $575 billion in Medicare savings over the next 10 years, mostly from Medicare payment reductions to doctors, hospitals, and health plans. But beneath these payment reductions, the PPACA also makes statutory changes that could challenge the autonomy of physicians to treat patients as they think best, undercut the freedom of physicians to remain in private practice, and threaten the continuation of fee-for-service medicine regardless of the preferences of doctors and patients. Read more...
More Than 3M Seniors May Have to Switch Drug Plans Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar Associated Press, 8/25/10
A plan by Medicare to try to make it simpler for consumers to pick drug coverage could force 3 million seniors to switch plans next year whether they like it or not, says an independent analysis. That risks undercutting President Barack Obama's promise that people can keep their health plans if they like them. And it could be an unwelcome surprise for many seniors who hadn't intended to make a change during Medicare's open enrollment season this fall. Read more...
Doctors Seek Support for Patient-centred Care The Canadian Press, 8/24/10
Patient advocates are backing a blueprint by Canada's largest doctors group to transform the health system by focusing on patient-centred care, but they admit the road forward could be strewn with obstacles. On Monday, delegates attending the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association debated how to go about altering the health-care system to make it more responsive to individuals, based on a new charter of patient-focused care. The charter — part of the much larger, recently released CMA plan for overhauling medicare — drew praise from one of Canada's best-known patient advocates, who called it an important move by doctors. Read more...
Americans Losing Confidence in ObamaCare’s Promise of Lower Costs and Medicare Guarantee Fred Lucas CNS News, 8/24/10
Americans are less confident they will be able to afford their health care now than they were before President Barack Obama signed the $1 trillion health care overhaul package, according to a poll released on the five-month anniversary of the president’s signature. A Thomson-Reuters consumer confidence poll released Monday said “Americans’ confidence in their ability to pay for and access health care has fallen by 5 percent since December 2009.” The survey encompassed 3,000 people. Read more...
Gone Are the Days of 'Hope', Consumers Fear New Healthcare Reform Law American Action Forum, 8/10
Consumer confidence in accessing, using, and paying for healthcare has hit historic lows as Americans learn more about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. ... Thomson Reuters released its July Consumer Healthcare Sentiment Index and the survey’s monthly subset of 3,000 households shows that consumer confidence in U.S. healthcare services has dropped significantly. According to the report, “For the first time, consumer responses on every question related to both retrospective and prospective confidence in their ability to access, use, and pay for healthcare were statistically worse than the December 2009 baseline survey of 100,000 households.” Read more...
Medical Care Facts and Fables Thomas Sowell Real Clear Politics, 8/24/10
There is so much political spin, and so many numbers games being played, when it comes to medical care, that we have to go back to square one and the simplest common sense, in order to get some rational idea of what government-run medical care means. In particular, we need to examine the claim that the government can "bring down the cost of medical care." The most basic fact is that it is cheaper to remain sick than to get medical treatment. What is cheapest of all is to die instead of getting life-saving medications and treatment, which can be very expensive. Read more...
