One has to grudgingly admire the skill with which the Democrats have bamboozled America’s docs into helping them kill Medicare Advantage. By attaching proposed MA cuts to the physician pay controversy, the Dems have forced the AMA to help them gut a successful free-market alternative to the soon-to-be-bankrupt traditional Medicare program.
This is not, by the way, the first time the Democrats have throttled market-based Medicare reform in the cradle. After taking over Congress in the 1990s, Republicans attempted to introduce a similar market-based initiative. However, the degenerate gentleman who occupied the White House at the time wasn’t having any. As the WSJ phrases it:
The Clinton Administration sabotaged Advantage’s predecessor, Medicare+Choice, by starving it of money. The playbook is the same now.
Many physicians are aware of all this, of course, and the people who run the AMA certainly know it. But what alternative did they have? Forced to choose between absorbing a gigantic pay cut right now and sacrificing the long-term theoretical benefits of free market Medicare reform, their choice had the grim inevitability of Greek tragedy.
The docs are in a box, and the Dems are sitting on the lid.
Comments 3
How come the house vote was 355 - 59 if it was just the Democrats in favour?
Posted 08 Jul 2008 at 5:38 am ¶Like their counterparts in the Senate, the House Republicans are terrified of the AMA.
Posted 08 Jul 2008 at 8:43 am ¶Medicare advantage is no free market either. These plans take the money from the government and pay doctors at medicare rates as well.This is the ugly face of these private insurance companies who hide behind medicare regulation so that they don’t have to negotiate with doctors. Ideal answer is to abolish medicare altogether.
Posted 23 Jul 2008 at 12:54 pm ¶Post a Comment