Health Care DC Style

Read these articles Carefully. While most Americans would like improvements on our health care system,
it appears that the idiots in Washington, DC haven't a clue as how to do it, without some grandiose plan
that is all about more power to the politicians, and the payoffs that their plans would encourage.
Who are these people advocating these plans?

Dodd was called a weasel by his home state newspaper
because of his shady relationships with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and being caught with a below market
mortgage from CountryWide.

We all know the background of Teddy Kennedy over the years and don't have to elaborate here.

And the President? Besides his shady past, Read this.

It is received wisdom among Democrats that President Clinton’s health-care plan failed in 1994 in part because he gave his opponents too much time to publicly dissect it. President Obama has been skilful in applying that lesson while hustling through his own health-care package this year. The administration has worked closely with congressional allies to keep the grim reality of what they have in mind out of public view for as long as possible.

In Pitch to AMA, Obama Paints Mixed Picture
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 16, 2009

CHICAGO, June 15 -- President Obama wooed the American Medical Association on Monday with talk of curbing malpractice lawsuits and canceling a proposed 21 percent cut in Medicare payments as he ramped up a newly aggressive effort to line up industry support for an overhaul of the nation's health system.

But he pointedly refused to endorse the group's top goal -- caps on damage awards -- and steadfastly defended creation
of a government-sponsored health insurance program, which many physicians oppose. "The public option is not your enemy;
it is your friend," Obama told the doctors.

The president's good-news, bad-news message to the physicians marked what White House senior adviser David Axelrod
described as a higher level of engagement by the president on his top domestic priority.

For months, Obama remained on the sidelines of the health-care debate because "he felt it was important to not be too proscriptive,
" Axelrod said in an interview. "Now we're into a different phase, where decisions are being made very quickly, so it's time
to weigh in to a greater degree."

The Obama strategy, articulated in the speech here and in a series of private meetings, is to present each major stakeholder
with an enticement in return for a bit of sacrifice.

To insurers, Obama offered a concession and a warning. In a shift from his position during the presidential campaign, he is willing
to support a requirement that every American have health insurance, which could translate into more than 40 million new customers
for the industry.

"Insurance companies have expressed support for the idea of covering the uninsured -- and I welcome their willingness to engage
constructively in the reform debate. I'm glad they're at the table," Obama said. "But what I refuse to do is simply create a system
where insurance companies suddenly have a whole bunch more customers on Uncle Sam's dime but still fail to meet their responsibilities."

Some interest groups have begun to balk as the president has staked out his position in greater detail.

Over the weekend, Obama outlined $313 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid aimed primarily at the revenue of hospitals
and drugmakers.

The American Hospital Association said in a statement that it was "deeply disappointed and concerned" by the announcement.

"Hospitals have long supported expanding health care coverage to all Americans but feel this must happen while maintaining
adequate financing for hospitals that serve large numbers of poor and uninsured patients," the group said.

Lobbyists for leading drug companies also were unenthusiastic, saying privately that Obama cannot expect to pay for his ambitious
expansion of health coverage by squeezing the private sector.

"The message is: Everybody has got to put something on the table," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has participated in several
White House meetings on health care.

But immediate reaction to Obama's speech Monday illustrated that it will not be easy to neutralize some of the powerful forces
that helped defeat previous attempts at health-care reform.

"He's a wonderful speaker, and he told us what we want to hear," said Norman Dunitz, a Tulsa hip and knee surgeon. "The question
isn't what he said but what he's going to do. He has a reputation of shifting sides."

Obama brought the doctors to their feet with a hint that he is willing to provide some level of malpractice relief, perhaps the top
legislative priority of the physicians lobby.

"Now, I recognize that it will be hard to make some of these changes if doctors feel like they're constantly looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits," he said. "I understand some doctors may feel the need to order more tests and treatments to avoid being legally vulnerable. That's a real issue."

But he drew some boos when he warned that he would not give doctors what they most desire.

"I want to be honest with you," he said. "I'm not advocating caps on malpractice awards, which I personally believe can be unfair
to people who've been wrongfully harmed."

James Rohack, the incoming AMA president, said physicians must receive some type of legal protection if they are going to be expected to reduce extraneous tests and treatments, as Obama urged.

"Unless we have protection in the courtroom for not ordering a test, we're going to order those additional tests," Rohack told reporters after the speech.

Like malpractice reform, the notion of setting up a new, government-run insurance plan has become a flash point for many AMA members.
The group's leaders have said the AMA would oppose mandatory participation in such a program or one that sets payment rates in the same fashion as Medicare.

In his speech, Obama said, "Let me also address an illegitimate concern that's being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system. . . . When you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They're not telling the truth."

Peter Schwartz, a Pennsylvania gynecologist, appeared reassured.

"He reaffirmed that he's not moving us toward a single-payer system, which many of us were concerned about," he said afterward.

But many were alarmed by Obama's talk of squeezing what he described as waste out of the system by curtailing needless procedures.

Ohio physician Colette R. Willins said that even when sound guidelines suggest a particular test is not needed, "an attorney will find
that situation where you didn't do the test for that one person in 100,000 who needed it."

The AMA, with about 250,000 members, is the nation's largest physician group. It gave more than $1.8 million to federal candidates
in the last election cycle, according to data analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics.

THE EDITORIAL
June 16, 2009 4:00 AM
For Republicans, a Health-Care Opportunity
By the Editors

But this kind of political maneuvering has its limits. As key Senate committees rush to push through the legislation before the
July 4 recess, it is no longer possible to hide the ball. Details have started to emerge in recent days, and it is no coincidence
that the political terrain has started to shift perceptibly. And the more the broader public learns about what the Democrats
are contemplating, the less likely it is that the bill will pass.

The Kennedy-Dodd draft bill was the first to find its way into the public domain, and it is wall-to-wall government
regulation, mandates, subsidies, and entitlement spending. Here’s one example of the massive governmental overreach
it represents: The bill would allow states to block licensed, qualified insurance companies from offering coverage to
citizens in the “gateways,” which are single-state or multistate insurance exchanges intended to help connect consumers
with a broad selection of competing providers. The states’ability, in effect, to bar some competitors from the
marketplace is guaranteed to become an instrument for protecting politically connected insurance interests while stifling
innovation, shortchanging consumers, and inflating costs.

Then there’s the elephantine expense of the program. The Democratic plans envision providing new subsidies for
the purchase of insurance. The Kennedy-Dodd bill would allow households with incomes of up to 500 percent of the
poverty line (meaning $110,250 for a family of four in 2009) to qualify for federal support. Most estimates put the
cost of such a program at well over $1 trillion over ten years.

For months, President Obama has said he would pay for this new entitlement by “bending the cost curve,” but he
has so far failed to present any credible plan to do so. Instead, on Saturday, he proposed to cut Medicare and
Medicaid reimbursements by an additional $313 billion over ten years — on top of the $309 billion in cuts he
proposed in his 2010 budget plan.

Imagine that a Republican president had tried to cut Medicare and Medicaid spending by $625 billion over a decade.
We doubt the story would have been relegated to the back pages of the major newspapers, as President Obama’s
proposal was yesterday. Moreover, in the unlikely event these cuts should be adopted by Congress, that would not
fulfill the president’s commitment to curb rising health-care costs, as a Washington Post story claimed yesterday.
These cuts in Medicare and Medicaid payments are nothing more than reimbursement reductions with no empirical
or economic basis to justify them. They will not bend the cost curve; instead, they will shift even more costs onto
consumers as doctors and hospitals fleeced by the feds look to make up the difference elsewhere.

Fortunately, some hospital executives and other players with skin in the game are starting to grasp that the
president’s budget-cutting proposal provides a bitter foretaste of what can be expected after a takeover by
Washington. The government always promises painless savings through trimming waste and inefficiency, but
what it always delivers is a regime of arbitrary price controls. The result will be to drive doctors out of the profession
and hospitals out of business, meaning fewer choices, higher real prices, and longer waits for care.

The primary alternative to deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid fees is Senator Baucus’s proposal to impose taxes
on employer-paid health-insurance premiums. Fixing the tax treatment of health insurance is necessary to build a true
marketplace, but Senator Baucus’s main interest is raising revenue for a government takeover, not offering market-based
reform through which revenue would be returned to consumers. And to bring in real money, Senator Baucus will have
to tax the middle class and unions as well as the high earners.

Speaking at the American Medical Association yesterday, President Obama promised a painless plan with no costs
to the middle class and protections that would allow anyone who likes his current coverage to keep it. The details of
what Democrats are pushing through Congress tell another story. To pay for Obamacare, Congress must either impose
deep, cost-shifting cuts in Medicare, thereby raising insurance premiums, or they must raise taxes on the middle class.
Neither measure will be easy to pass. Moreover, employers, not consumers, will get to decide where their workers
get coverage. In practice, that means that tens of millions of people are going to be forced out of their current plans,
which they generally like, and into a government program.

In short, Congress’s deeds are at odds with Obama’s words; it is little wonder that fissures are starting to emerge
in the Democratic coalition. President Obama has made a lot of fine promises on health care; Nancy Pelosi and
Harry Reid are getting ready to stick a shiv in them. Republicans should bear witness, and then get to work producing
better solutions.