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October 27, 2009

If you're a senior, you could be a 'clunker' and not know it - yet

Topics: Political News and commentaries

In what seems to be a highly appropriate analogy, Betsy McCaughey reports that the Senate Finance Committee health bill released last week could turn seniors into clunkers - disabled, worn out patients, parked in wheelchairs or nursing homes, like used-up parts no longer needed or wanted (my words not hers). It controls doctors by cutting their pay if they give older patients more care than the government deems appropriate. What Medicare provided seniors for nearly a half century, ObamaCare is about to change by limiting what doctors can provide their aging patients:

[...] The Senate Finance Committee health bill released last week controls doctors by cutting their pay if they give older patients more care than the government deems appropriate. Section 3003(b) (p. 683) punishes doctors who land in the 90th percentile or above on what they provide for seniors on Medicare by withholding 5 percent of their compensation.

This withhold provision forces doctors to choose between treating their patients and avoiding government penalties. HMOs used the same cost-cutting device in the early '90s until it was deemed dangerous to patients and outlawed. Now, lawmakers want to use it against the most vulnerable patients, the elderly. This bill and four others under negotiation also would slash about $500 billion from future Medicare funding.

President Obama and his budget director, Peter Orszag, have told seniors not to worry, claiming that Medicare spending could be cut by as much as 30 percent without doing harm. They cite the Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare 2008, which tries to prove patients who get less care -- fewer hospital days, doctors' visits and imaging tests -- have the same medical "outcomes" as patients who get more care. But read the fine print.

The Dartmouth authors arrived at their dubious conclusion by restricting their study to patients who died. They examined what Medicare paid to care for these chronically ill patients in their last two years. By definition, the outcomes were all the same: death. The Dartmouth study didn't consider patients who recovered, left the hospital and even resumed active lives. It would be important to know whether these patients survived because they received more care. (More)

Interestingly, McCaughey's analogy appears to be backed up by Obamanistas, as evidenced by videos of them in their own words.

Here is what Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under Clinton and more recently an Obama economic adviser, has to say about letting older patients die to save money:

Morgen Richmond offers these instructive comments on what Robert Reich says in the above video:

It's also worth noting that when Reich gave this speech, all of the Democratic candidates had released their health reform plans. And it's a topic that Reich is intimately familiar with, as an economist, and given his prior involvement in the Clinton health reform debacle.

And contrary to the platitudes and spin that you hear from Reich and other proponents of ObamaCare now, every point he made in this video represents an argument which conservatives have made against the bills in Congress

And then there's Obama, himself. Who can forget this interview when Jane Sturm asked the President if her 100 year old mother (now 105) would have gotten a pacemaker under his plan, and Obama said, "Well now that's a tough one ... that costs a lot and maybe we will have to say, just take a pill."

So apparently McCaughey's right, at least as evidenced by the words of Obama's own advisor and Obama himself: If you're a senior, you could indeed be a "clunker" and destined for an Obamacare "junkyard."

Posted by Richard at October 27, 2009 8:08 AM

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