Regulated To Death By ObamaCare?

Investor's Business Daily ^ | December 27, 2010 | IBD staff

[raptor22]

Health Care: Unable to attach it directly to ObamaCare, a new Medicare rule will offer incentive to doctors who advise patients on end-of-life care in a program that seeks to control costs. Connect those dots, grandma.

The GOP House that comes in January has pledged to chip away, defund and neuter ObamaCare in any way it can, since outright repeal is problematical until 2012. President Obama's veto pen looms large, even if such a bill makes it through the Senate.

Target one should be a Medicare regulation that says it will cover doctors as part of an annual covered "wellness" visit, advising patients on "advance care planning" or end-of-life care counseling in which they will be instructed on how to draw up an "advance directive" on the parameters of their care when and if they cannot make such decisions for themselves.

If this sounds familiar, a variation was part of the original health care overhaul passed by the House in November 2009 but not included in the final legislation after much uproar. Section 1233 of the original bill let Medicare pay for advance care consultations every five years.

[NYC GOP Chick]

Obamacare: Making sure granny is shovel-ready!

[raptor22]

Ping

[Still Thinking]

They better be careful. The more outrageous they get, the more people will just decide they don’t need Washington’s permission to eat, sleep, drink, and breathe, and will just decline to play. It wouldn’t take very many people like that to break whatever enforcement system they have.

[Spunky]

"Section 1233 of the original bill let Medicare pay for advance care consultations every five years."

Now in Obama's "Regulation" they will pay the doctor every year.

Side note. This past month my husband had a cardiology exam. On the Medicare Statement it had 3 different codes about smoking. One of them showed he was a non-user. The notes section showed d,e. The d, states Medicare does not pay for services when no charge is indicated. The e, says; "This code is for informational/reporting purposes only......

This is the first time we have EVER seen this type of thing on the Medicare Summary of Benefits.

It has started. Life Style is going to be a factor in the care you will be getting.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

Something like 35% of ALL Medicare expenses are spent on individuals in their last 6 months of life. That said, there WILL be “death panels” as a cost control method. No ifs, ands or buts.

[dila813]

I was watching O’Reily Factor and the Lib on there said “How could you be against this, it is good for the patient and it is good for the Tax payer”

Ok lady, if it is good for Tax Payers, then how is this not a push for granny to off herself? I mean, that is the only way this could benefit the Tax Payer; how else?

[goldstategop]

Just cut off funding. That’s as good as outright repeal.

[Liz]

O/Care adds over 100 new boards, commissions and programs. For example a new Medicare Commission, exempt from judicial review, will unilaterally write rules about utilization and pricing of medical devices and drugs often needed by surgeons. Many regulatory bodies will be overarching in their abilities to select and direct medical subjects concerning Tri-Care, employer group policies, Veteran’s Administration, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

Your new healthcare system.........diligent personnel could not fit all of O'Care's new law’s boards, commissions, mandates, and other elements on this chart. So they created “bundles of bureaucracy.” Seven collective symbols respectively represent clusters of four loan repayment and forgiveness programs, four other new regulatory programs, 17 insurance mandates, 19 special-interest provisions, 22 other new bureaucracies, 26 other new demonstration and pilot programs, and 59 other new grant programs.....

These 151 additional items within Obamacare do not appear individually on this diagram. As Representative Brady explains, “If we included all of these units, this chart (above) would be three times larger.”