While Press coverage of the recently recessed Congress has focused on the failure of Pelosi & Co. to address high gasoline prices, this was not the only policy issue on which they behaved irresponsibly.
The Democrat majority is also guilty of dereliction of duty in the face of the Medicare funding crisis. Here’s how the Chairman of the Republican Study Committee […]
As expected, the Senate has gutted Medicare Advantage, effectively killing the last hope of market-based Medicare reform. The “news” media, the AMA, and even some normally sensible medical bloggers are spinning this act of stupidity as a victory for beleaguered physicians over mean-spirited Republicans and insurance company robber barons.
But the physicians didn’t win a victory. All they got was a temporary stay of execution. The reimbursement cuts […]
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 […]
While the AMA pressures Republican senators to acquiesce in the Democrat attempt to euthanize MA, it might be useful to look at the attitude of the actual patients (remember them?) .
As it happens, a survey conducted by Ayres, McHenry & Associates shows that Medicare beneficiaries are overwhelmingly against cutting funds to the Medicare Advantage program:
Seniors disapprove of cutting payments to doctors who […]
A variety of Democrats and advocacy groups have been telling us for years that “Medicare-for-All” is the cure for what ails U.S. health care. Well, Congress has just demonstrated why that’s such a dumb idea. Donald Johnson over at The Health Care Blog spells it out:
Under a “universal health insurance system,” which is advocated by the Democrats, […]
Congressional Democrats, worried that market-based health care reform is actually working, have been doing their best to throttle Medicare Advantage in the cradle.
Last year, abetted by ”experts” who made the disingenuous claim that we had to choose between ”the kids” and the insurance companies, the Dems tried to use SCHIP expansion as a pretext for killing MA.
When their SCHIP scam failed, they floundered around for a while but eventually came up with their latest […]
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Posted 29 June 2008
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Advocates of government-run health care are always telling us that administrative costs are somehow lower for Medicare than for private insurance. But they never explain precisely how Medicare manages to operate on such miraculously low admin costs. Scott Gottlieb provides the answer in the WSJ:
It passes costs for that on to the broader health-care system by backing […]
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Posted 24 June 2008
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If you are one of those people who believe that giving our masters in Washington full control over our health care delivery system will make things more efficient, I recommend GruntDoc’s latest post on the National Provider Identifier (NPI).
For anyone lucky enough to be unaware of the NPI, it is the latest number that CMS has ordered providers […]
Barack Obama offers a health care reform plan that envisions a much larger role for the federal government in the day-to-day operation of our medical delivery system.
Before signing on, however, the voters would be wise to consider the bureaucratic mismanagement that plagues the government health care programs we already have.
ER Nursey provides an illustrative example of the moronic policies […]
I noted recently that a gang of pirates auditors was about to descend on America’s hospitals in search of Medicare “overpayments.” These “Recovery Audit Contractors,” who are paid a percentage of the booty recoveries, will be ransacking patient charts in search of “errors.”
Well, the RAC program is now being rolled out nationwide, and this CMS report outlining the results of the original pilot project […]
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Posted 13 May 2008
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