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THE CURE
Chief Of Staff
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flyupsidedown
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Joined: 16 Feb 2007
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 Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 8:48 am Post subject: |
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I love how these self proclaimed organizations endorse as if they really really count when a majority of the elderly and doctors are against it.
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Blessed happy, fortunate, prosperous and enviable is the man who walks and lives not in the counsel of the ungodly (following their advice, plans and purposes) . . . Ps 1 |
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coastie
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Joined: 02 Jan 2009
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 9:48 am Post subject: |
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ama - from wickepdia
| Quote: | | The American Medical Association (AMA), founded in 1847 and incorporated 1897,[1] is the largest association of physicians and medical students in the United States. While its membership has declined in recent years, it claims approximately 20% of practicing physicians as members.[2 |
So, about 1 in 5 physicians are members.
AARP - far left - selected Harry Belafonte as person of the year in 2006. This, after Belafonte, in Venezuela with his buddy Hugo Chavez, proclaimed George Bush was the "world's greatest terrorist". |
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flyupsidedown
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 10:47 am Post subject: |
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coastie: | Quote: | | So, about 1 in 5 physicians are members. |
And I wonder how many of that '1 in 5' in their organization actually agree with their stance on Obamacare. Obama loves those 'smoke and mirrors'. He should also add an illusionist to his resume'.
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Blessed happy, fortunate, prosperous and enviable is the man who walks and lives not in the counsel of the ungodly (following their advice, plans and purposes) . . . Ps 1 |
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coastie
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Joined: 02 Jan 2009
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 10:54 am Post subject: |
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from the wall street journal:
| Quote: | Wall Street Journal, 11/1/09
Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.
In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.
Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.
•The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate. Most of the money goes into government-run "exchanges" where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level—that is, up to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—could buy coverage at heavily subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000, and so forth.
At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this "firewall"—which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on "free" health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone else in Washington.
Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.
• Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.
As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.
Even though the House will assume 91% of the "matching rate" for this joint state-federal program—up from today's 57%—governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento are in fiscal collapse. Washington's budget will collapse too, if anything like the House bill passes.
• European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point "surcharge" on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won't have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.
This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn't indexed for inflation. Yet it still won't be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they'll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.
Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don't offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers' premiums, which eat into wages. Such "play or pay" taxes always become "pay or pay" and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.
Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won't buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.
• The insurance takeover. A new "health choices commissioner" will decide what counts as "essential benefits," which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.
The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177 million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.
The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands: There will be no such thing as "private" health insurance.
***
All of this is intentional, even if it isn't explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back "public option" entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.
As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.
Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of "change," but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.
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coastie
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Joined: 02 Jan 2009
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coastie
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Outsider
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Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 9:52 am Post subject: |
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Fly wrote:
| Quote: | | I love how these self proclaimed organizations endorse as if they really really count when a majority of the elderly and doctors are against it. |
Maybe you are getting your facts from the wrong place.
| Quote: | Most U.S. doctors want public-private mix: poll
Mon Sep 14, 2009 7:10pm EDT
By Gene Emery
BOSTON (Reuters) - Most U.S. doctors favor having both public and private options in a reformed healthcare system, a survey published on Monday said.
The possible inclusion of a public option -- a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers -- is one of the most divisive parts of the reform that is President Barack Obama's top domestic legislative priority.
When given a three-way choice among private plans that use tax credits or subsidies to help the poor buy private insurance; a new public health insurance plan such as Medicare; or a mix of the two; 63 percent of doctors supported a mix, 27 percent said they only wanted private options, and just 10 percent said they exclusively wanted public options.
The survey of 2,130 U.S. doctors, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also found that more 55 percent, regardless of their medical specialty, would favor expanding Medicare so it covered people aged 55 and older.
Medicare is the federal health insurance plan for people aged over 65 and some disabled people.
"The result shows that physicians see this system is broken and needs to be fixed," Dr. John Lumpkin, senior vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which sponsored the survey, said in a telephone interview.
About half of doctors supported trying to save money by restricting care to treatments proven to be cost-effective, a separate survey of 991 doctors in the same journal said.
PAYMENTS
The polls have been published less than a week after Obama addressed Congress to outline the plan he says will overhaul the $2.5 trillion industry to cut costs, improve care and expand coverage to many of the 46 million Americans without any healthcare insurance.
The concept of a public option has drawn much controversy and the American Medical Association, which represents about 250,000 U.S. doctors, has opposed it.
Drs. Salomeh Keyhani and Alex Federman of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, authors of the larger study, found broad physician support for a combination of private and public insurance, regardless of their region, medical specialty, how they earned their income, or how many hours they spent treating patients.
Similar results were seen when doctors were asked about extending Medicare to those aged 55 and above. Fifty-eight percent supported the idea, 23 percent were opposed and 19 percent were unsure.
In the smaller survey, 73 percent said every doctor ought to care for the uninsured and underinsured and 67 percent said they were willing to accept limits on payments for expensive drugs and procedures as a way to save money and make basic care available to more people.
"By contrast, physicians were divided almost equally about cost-effectiveness analysis; just over half (54 percent) reported having a moral objection to using such data 'to determine which treatments will be offered to patients,'" said the survey team, led by Ryan Antiel of the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota.
Family doctors were more likely to favor reform than surgeons and other specialists.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and Alison Williams) |
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coastie
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Joined: 02 Jan 2009
Posts: 577
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| Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 7:03 am Post subject: |
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The AARP claims to be all about representing the interests of seniors, but when it comes to health care reform, they are selling seniors down the river to line their own pockets.
The AARP has endorsed the gargantuan PelosiCare bill that just passed the House, despite the fact the bill proposes more than $400 billion in cuts to Medicare, which is certain to lead to rationing, inferior care and "death panels" for vulnerable senior citizens.
Why? As they say, follow the money. PelosiCare will also cut Medicare Advantage by $170 billion. Medicare Advantage allows seniors to purchase private insurance with their Medicare payments, but these cuts will drive many of these seniors into inferior Medigap plans.
AARP has a vested interest in seniors being driven out of Medicare Advantage into Medigap plans because AARP makes a fortune in royalty fees from Medigap plans. More than one-half of its $1.1 billion budget comes from such royalty fees, and Medigap plans make up the biggest share of this royalty revenue by far.
The more seniors are forced out of Medicare Advantage into Medigap plans, the more money AARP makes. In other words, under PelosiCare, seniors lose but AARP wins - big time.
Even the Washington Post noted the conflict of interest on Oct. 27, when it said, "Democratic proposals to slash reimbursements for...Medicare Advantage are widely expected to drive up demand for private Medigap policies like the ones offered by AARP
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