Health Care BS

One of the ways ObamaCare will “cover” the uninsured is by herding about 18 million people onto Medicaid. But the health care “reform” law doesn’t provide enough money to the states to pay for all these new enrollees. So, the states will increasingly have to cut provider payment rates.

This means that most of the “newly covered” patients won’t be able to find doctors and other providers willing to treat them. And there’s another catch. Those “newly covered” people will also have to abandon some of their legal rights. This is what the Obama Administration has told the Supreme Court:

Medicaid recipients and health care providers cannot sue state officials to challenge cuts in Medicaid payments, even if such cuts compromise access to health care for poor people, the Obama administration has told the Supreme Court.

Medicaid rates, according to federal law, must be high enough to allow doctors and hospitals to accept Medicaid patients without going bankrupt. This law allegedly assures equal access to care. But the Obama administration says patients have no right to sue if states don’t obey the law:

The Justice Department said that no federal law allowed private individuals to sue states to enforce this standard … Such lawsuits ‘would not be compatible’ with the means of enforcement envisioned by Congress, which relies on the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make sure states comply.

In other words, if cash-strapped states cut back on Medicaid payments and thereby reduce access for those covered under the program, Medicaid patients must await the pleasure of Kathleen Sebelius to protect their legal rights. This is so outrageous that even Democrat Henry Waxman is yelling:

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee and an architect of Medicaid, said the administration’s brief was ‘wrong on the law and bad policy.’

Waxman evidently hasn’t been paying attention. The Obama administration has long ago demonstrated that it has nothing but contempt for the law, and bad policy is what they do best. Doctors can’t afford to treat Medicaid patients, and the patients have no legal recourse. So, the uninsured get “coverage” but no care.