Blue Water Navy

Dear Friends,

On Sunday, I read an article in the Washington Post about serious funding cuts to Medicare in H.R. 3962, Speaker Pelosi's health care bill. The article focused on a report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released last week revealing major spending cuts to Medicare. I wanted to share some of these findings with you (click here to skip to the full article).

If passed, H.R. 3962 will purge $500 billion from Medicare, sacrificing benefits and access for many senior citizens across the nation. The report shows spending cuts so deep that hospitals and nursing homes may have to stop taking Medicare patients all together.

The Democrats have fundamentally sold this health care bill to Americans on the false premise that it will increase coverage and decrease costs, however, this is not the case. In reality, the Obama Administration is offering the $1.3 trillion health care bill with a fairy tale cost solution by cutting over $500 billion in senior health care benefits even after pledging to protect it.

To learn more about these cuts to Medicare continue reading below.
http://issa.congressnewsletter.net/mail ... inkid=7412
Report: Bill would reduce senior care
Medicare cuts approved by House may affect access to providers

By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 15, 2009

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.

Congress could intervene to avoid such an outcome, but "so doing would likely result in significantly smaller actual savings" than is currently projected, according to the analysis by the chief actuary for the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. That would wipe out a big chunk of the financing for the health-care reform package, which is projected to cost $1.05 trillion over the next decade.

More generally, the report questions whether the country's network of doctors and hospitals would be able to cope with the effects of a reform package expected to add more than 30 million people to the ranks of the insured, many of them through Medicaid, the public health program for the poor.

In the face of greatly increased demand for services, providers are likely to charge higher fees or take patients with better-paying private insurance over Medicaid recipients, "exacerbating existing access problems" in that program, according to the report from Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Though the report does not attempt to quantify that impact, Foster writes: "It is reasonable to expect that a significant portion of the increased demand for Medicaid would not be realized."

The report offers the clearest and most authoritative assessment to date of the effect that Democratic health reform proposals would have on Medicare and Medicaid, the nation's largest public health programs. It analyzes the House bill, but the Senate is also expected to rely on hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts to finance the package that Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to take to the floor this week. Like the House, the Senate is expected to propose adding millions of people to Medicaid.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administers the two health-care programs. Foster's office acts as an independent technical adviser, serving both the administration and Congress. In that sense, it is similar to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which also has questioned the sustainability of proposed Medicare cuts.

In its most recent analysis of the House bill, the CBO noted that Medicare spending per beneficiary would have to grow at roughly half the rate it has over the past two decades to meet the measure's savings targets, a dramatic reduction that many budget and health policy experts consider unrealistic.

"This report confirms what virtually every independent expert has been saying: [House] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi's health-care bill will increase costs, not decrease them," said Rep. Dave Camp (Mich.), the senior Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. "This is a stark warning to every Republican, Democrat and independent worried about the financial future of this nation."

Democrats focused Saturday on the positive aspects of the report, noting that Foster concludes that overall national spending on health care would increase by a little more than 1 percent over the next decade, even though millions of additional people would gain insurance. Out-of-pocket spending would decline more than $200 billion by 2019, with the government picking up much of that. The Medicare savings, if they materialized, would extend the life of that program by five years, meaning it would not begin to require cash infusions until 2022.

"The president has made it clear that health insurance reform will protect and strengthen Medicare," said White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass. "And he has also made clear that no guaranteed Medicare benefits will be cut."

Republicans argued that the report forecasts an increase in total health-care spending of more than $289 billion.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02597.html

Mac wrote:Daklander,
Will the VA still exist if we have national healthcare ? Why would it ? We would already have healthcare , and what better place to administer it than the VA Hospitals ? I think this is one of the Obama Administration's cost saving ideas , and the Hospitals are already in place , just open them to everyone.
I think this is why Senators are reluctant to address S 1939 , Congress can support HR 2254 and save face with voters ( knowing it will never fly without the Senate) gives them a shield. Nothing but a game being played on us from what I've seen so far. I hope I'm wrong on this , but beginning to wonder.
I say you are right on the mark here , and we better pay close attention. Thanks for your post.

ExIntrepid wrote:Yeah.

Congress pried the 'LockBox' open with a crowbar.

I can't even blame the Democrats; the Republicans had a pry-bar behind their backs too. (or maybe first!)

's why I've been referring to myself as a Conservative, rather than a Republican.

Sigh...

—ExIntrepid