Free Republic

As the suicidal Democratic congressmen proceed to rubber-stamp the Obama healthcare reform despite the drubbing their party took in the ’09 elections, the president trotted out the endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support. But these — and the other endorsements — his package has received are all bought and paid for. Here are the deals: · The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians’ reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5-6...

CBS4 I-Team Investigator Stephen Stock went undercover with other I-Team member to find suspect medical clinics operating in South Florida one step ahead of the law. The grainy, shaky undercover video tape shot by the CBS4 I-Team shows dozens of...........

…Thanks so much for reforming the health care system that will cover 94% of the population up from the 88%-90% legal population that are anyway covered. … Thanks for coming up with a plan that will be “self-sustaining” and “deficit neutral” just as social security was supposed to be. Now let me ask you a few questions, Mr. and Mrs. Democrat:

Healthcare reform will come about in some shape or form at some point in time. After all, we have seen major healthcare reform initiatives since 1920 including Truman’s attempt at universal healthcare in the 1950s. Today’s healthcare reform discussions have two major flaws: 1) The word “money” is not voiced enough, and, 2) The discussion is plagued and derailed by misinformation. The operative word missing from today’s healthcare reform discussion is money. Modifying insurance and reforming our tort system is not enough to solve this quagmire. As with many problems, the key issue is simply money. Who gets what? When...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Medicare has become a scary word to the doctors at the largest private group practice in Kansas City, Mo. It's so scary that most physicians at Kansas City Internal Medicine, with 65% of its nearly 70,000 active patients age 65 or older, have stopped accepting walk-in Medicare enrollees, said Dr. David Wilt, an internist at the group. Wilt and his colleagues say they are shunning the area's growing senior population because they believe Medicare doesn't reimburse physicians enough to cover the cost of care. "And if Medicare further cuts its reimbursement rates, then we'll be functioning...

Everyone knows that if you don't pay to maintain and repair your car, you limit its life. The same is true as human beings age. We need medical care to avoid becoming clunkers -- disabled, worn out, parked in wheelchairs or nursing homes. For nearly a half century, Medicare has enabled seniors to get that care. But ObamaCare is about to change that, by limiting what doctors can provide their aging patients. The Senate Finance Committee health bill released last week controls doctors by cutting their pay if they give older patients more care than the government deems appropriate. Section...

Proving my contention that broken, ineffective, and bankrupt government programs leads to more broken, ineffective, and bankrupt government programs, the Treasury Department has reported that America faces a $43 trillion unfunded obligation in Social Security and Medicare benefits with 77 million retiring baby boomers and rising health care costs.

(CNN) -- "Keep the government's hands off my Medicare." Those words -- quoted by so many TV talking heads -- never seem actually to have been spoken by anyone. It's like that poodle in the microwave story: Everybody has a neighbor who heard it from his cousin. The town hallers were angry, but they were not crazy, and they were not stupid. They knew perfectly well that Medicare is provided by the government. They also knew that their government is proposing to change Medicare in ways they do not like. The health care reform plans backed by President Obama would...

Guillermo Denis Gonzalez was released from prison in Florida in 2004 after serving 12 years for murder. By the end of 2006, he owned a health care business officially licensed by Medicare. This August, the Miami Herald reported that Gonzalez pled guilty to filing $586,953 in phony Medicare claims for supplies that were never given to any actual patients -- but this was only after he was arrested for murdering and dismembering another victim, to which he also confessed. While it's shocking that government policing efforts are so lax for Medicare that even a convicted murderer can be granted a...

(CBS) Of all the problems facing the United States right now, none are more important than health care. President Obama says rising costs are driving huge federal budget deficits that imperil our future, and that there is enough waste and fraud in the system to pay for health care reform if it was eliminated. At the center of both issues is Medicare, the government insurance program that provides health care to 46 million elderly and disabled Americans. But it also provides a rich and steady income stream for criminals who are constantly finding new ways to steal a sizable chunk...

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., center, flanked Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., left, and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., discuss "the urgent need for health insurance reform". GRAND RAPIDS — Senior citizens will find it harder to find a doctor who accepts Medicare if Congress does not stop a 21.5 percent cut in payment rates, say physicians and hospitals. “We might as well start building bigger emergency rooms, because that’s where people will be if they don’t have access to a regular physician,” said Micki Benz, vice president of development for Saint Mary’s Health Care. “In the end, people’s care will suffer, and...

A funny thing happened on the way to one of the biggest scam attempts in history. It got ratted out. And Capitol Hill got an earful. So the U.S. Senate failed by seven votes to invoke cloture on Wednesday and push forward a bill that even had Washington Post editorialists gagging on its duplicity. Thirteen Democrats joined all 40 Republicans to reject 47-53 a free-standing Medicare bill, S. 1776, that would have pushed up the national deficit by a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. The reason it's a scam is that by separating it from...

Yip yip ya-hoo (as Limbaugh would say). The Dem's health care plan, as you probably know, will cover 94% of the U.S. population. Let’s have a drink to celebrate. But hold that one, because if you are currently uninsured, you still have a 50% chance of staying this way even if the Dem plan gets signed by Obama. Here are the simple numbers…

After a month of praising bipartisanship, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lashed out at the GOP on the Senate floor Wednesday when a Medicare measure he brought up for a vote failed amid concerns about its impact on the deficit. The bill would have prevented a 20 percent drop in Medicare reimbursement rates to doctors that is scheduled to take effect in January. Reid angrily blamed the loss on bad intelligence from the American Medical Association, which he said promised him 27 Republican votes (he got none), as well as Republican dirty tricks designed to impede Democrats' progress on meaningful...

According to AMA’s National Health Insurance Report Card, Medicare denies 6.85 percent of its claims, higher than any private insurer (Aetna was second, denying 6.80 percent of its claims), and more than double any private insurer’s average.What’s fascinating is that The American Medical Association (AMA) has endorsed a public option, despite the fact that “some member physicians at the group’s annual meeting [in June] likened the notion to communism.”The Obama administration repeats ad nauseum that we need a government option to “keep insurance companies honest” and to make sure they don’t deny anyone coverage. Well what does one say about the fact...

The Senate Finance Committee recently approved Senator Max Baucus's bill to reform the nation’s health-care system. Every Democrat on the Committee voted to approve this big government plan; all but one Republican opposed it. I opposed it because it not only won't reduce health-care costs (which is the number one goal), but, for many Americans, it will actually make things worse. Many Americans, including middle-income families and the chronically ill, will see their insurance premiums go up and their taxes increased. Others, like seniors, will see their health-care choices eliminated. And everybody should be concerned about rationing of health care...

If you want to understand why Aetna, Independence Blue Cross (Keystone), and other insurance companies are dropping some, though not all, of their Medicare Advantage policies, you have to understand the way these plans have been tainted by President Obama and the Democratic proposals for Obamacare in its various forms. Their proposals, not yet enacted, will destroy the greatest health care delivery system in the world if enacted. But what they have already done has started to do serious damage to our system, as exemplified by what is going on with Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage plans are popular and have...

'Doc fix' no longer up for cloture on MondayBy Tony Romm - 10/18/09 02:34 PM ET Senate Democrats have decided to postpone Monday's scheduled cloture vote on a bill that would reform how Medicare reimburses doctors and hospitals. Initially, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) scheduled his motion to end floor debate and bring the so-called 'doc fix bill' to a final vote at the beginning of next week. But the leader reportedly changed his mind on Friday, deciding instead to he would vitiate Monday's vote so both parties' lawmakers could broker an agreement on a few remaining amendments, his...

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Just an anti-ObamaCare ad during the Red River shootout (OU leading Tex 6-0, BTW).....that means they are going for the kill. An ad during the big college football game of the week is serious stuff, costs a lot, and reaches a lot of people. I don't care for the insurance cos too much, but hell, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and I wish them well in their quest to crush Obama and his asinine socialist health care plan.

By now, most are probably aware that President Obama is proposing a one time $250 check to seniors because there won't be a COLA (cost of living adjustment) increase this year to Social Security. With the bulk of the $787 billion stimulus package still unspent, some lawmakers say, President Obama should not be adding yet another $13 billion to the deficit by funding a one-time $250 Social Security payment.

IF only the laws of the uni verse didn't make it impossi ble to conjure something out of nothing. In a magical world free of such encumbrances, Democrats would be spared the bother of hiding the inevitable costs of ObamaCare. The latest gambit of Democrats in both the Senate and House is to take roughly $250 billion out of health-care reform -- for Medicare payments to doctors -- and spend it in a separate bill. This instantly makes ObamaCare appear cheaper, although its impact on the federal budget will be precisely the same. This isn't even competent three-card monte. It's...

First he was for it. Then he was against it. Now Rep. Mike Ross is back on board with a government-run healthcare plan. Sort of. Ross (D-Ark.), who had emerged as a leader among centrist Blue Dog Democrats opposing the public health insurance option, has suggested something his colleagues consider even more drastic – opening Medicare to those under 65 without insurance. He made the suggestion in meetings with House Democratic leaders and brought the idea to the closed-door House Democratic Caucus meeting Thursday. "I — speaking only on behalf of myself — suggested one possible idea could be that...

But if people have a choice to keep their current policy or select Medicare, all other things being the same, nobody would take Medicare except those who have no insurance, and, voila, everybody is covered. The big caveat, of course, is whether all other things like taxes on employer benefits stays the same. While I would not favor a massive expansion of Medicare, it forces the Dems to explain why this proposal doesn't provide choice and competition, while insuring everybody.

Remember this? [VIDEO OF OBAMA'S TRANSPARENCY AT SITE] Yeeeeeah: Maneuvering to boost prospects for sweeping health care legislation, Senate Democrats hope first to win quick approval for a bill that grants doctors a $247 billion increase in Medicare fees over a decade but raises federal deficits in the process, officials said Wednesday. By creating a two-bill approach, Democrats intend to claim the more comprehensive health care measure meets President Barack Obama’s conditions — that it will neither add to deficits nor exceed $900 billion in costs over 10 years. If approved and signed into law, the legislation would avert a...

The renowned Mayo Clinic is no longer accepting some Medicare and Medicaid patients, raising new questions about whether it is too selective to serve as a model for health-care reform. The White House has repeatedly held up for praise Mayo and other medical centers, many of which are in the Upper Midwest, that perform well in Dartmouth College rankings showing wide disparities in how much hospitals spend on Medicare patients. The model centers have capitalized on their status to insert into health-care legislation provisions that would result in higher Medicare payments for hospitals that do well on the Dartmouth rankings...

Eight Democratic senators stand between the Medicare and the destruction of the senior health care program as well as the ruin of American medicine generally.

Perhaps FR might feature this concern at the top of their menu? How will Obama's Health Reform proposals impact veterans 60 years and older who currently receive life sustaining treatment in such departments as oncology and cardiology via Tricare and hzd planned for Tricare For Life to fulfill the promise of our military service? When the Democrats say they will cut waste from medicare are they talking about us -- military retirees?

The estimate includes a projected net cost of $518 billion over 10 years for the proposed expansions in insurance coverage. That net cost itself reflects a gross total of $829 billion in credits and subsidies provided through the exchanges, increased net outlays for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and tax credits for small employers; those costs are partly offset by $201 billion in revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans and $110 billion in net savings from other sources. The net cost of the coverage expansions would be more than offset by the combination of...

Sole Control - Sen. Harry Reid will write the bill himself taking pieces of the Baucus vapor bill and the Kennedy "Do it for Ted" bill. This merger will happen with a few chosen people behind tightly closed doors. There will be no hearing, no testimony, no public input.

ou want to hear a scary number. When Medicare first passed in the 1960's, the program was worth $60 million yearly. The budget in Fiscal Year 2008 was $413 billion for Medicare. That's a roughly an increase of 8000 times in less than fifty years. So, yesterday, we heard that the CBO had scored the newest health care bill and scored it's cost at $812 billion over the next ten years. We also know that entitlement programs, especially those that involve health care, grow exponentially. Just think about this scary thought. If Medicare grew from $60 million to $400 billion...

For a half-year, this editorial page has lamented the determination of President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to fast-track extraordinarily complex legislation overhauling the U.S. health care system. Every American has a stake in improving our costly, inefficient system. But every lawmaker, from the president down, has a responsibility to make sure reform legislation has been thoroughly scrutinized to see if the claims being made for it hold up — and to ensure the measure would not create new problems as bad or worse than existing problems. Unfortunately, Obama has continued to paint...

In President Obama’s Washington, medical specialists are slightly more popular than the H1N1 virus. Compared to bread-and-butter primary care doctors, specialists cost more to train and make more use of expensive procedures and technology—and therefore cost the government more money. Even so, the quiet war Democrats are waging on specialists is astonishing.

What appears to be the official blog of President Obama’s administration is all aflutter because the President will welcome, “doctors from across the United States to the White House to share their unique perspective on the struggles that American families face every day when it comes to health care.” (They posted today’s agenda in the name of transparency!) -snip- Of the eight insurers listed, Medicare is most likely to reject a claim, sending away 6.85% of requests. This is more than any private insurer and double that of the private insurers’ average!

I've been called a lot of things in my long political career. But I've never before been called a racist. I'm reminded of Alfred E. Neumann-the crazy, grinning boy on the cover of the old MAD Magazine. His motto was: What, me worry? What, me racist? How did I manage this unusual trick? Well, two former Presidents-Jimmy Carter and now Bill Clinton-have labeled me such. Why? Because I oppose President Obama's takeover of our health care system. We're celebrating 200 years this December of the great Samuel Johnson who said "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels." Today, Dr. Johnson...

AS the health-reform bills move through Congress, the prognosis for Medicare pa tients gets worse and worse. The Senate Finance Committee bill (generally called the Baucus bill, after Chairman Max Baucus) robs the elderly to cover the uninsured -- like snatching purses from little old ladies. The House bills already cut future funding for Medicare by $500 billion over the next decade. The Baucus bill would slash a similar amount, just when 30 percent more people enter the program as baby boomers turn 65. The Baucus bill also puts new limits on what doctors can do for patients in Medicare:

If you watch C-Span for a while, you’re sure to hear a politician or pundit criticizing some idea by comparing it to “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” It’s a vivid illustration of the short-sightedness and futility of so much of what Washington does superficially to improve failed programs. In Washington today, however, we are witnessing an unprecedented extension of the Titanic analogy: Both parties and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are focused on rearranging our deck chairs while there is still time to steer around the iceberg, if only someone would grab the wheel...

HARTFORD, Conn. – The nation's nursing homes are perilously close to laying off workers, cutting services — possibly even closing — because of a perfect storm wallop from the recession and deep federal and state government spending cuts, industry experts say. A Medicare rate adjustment that cuts an estimated $16 billion in nursing home funding over the next 10 years was enacted at week's end by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — on top of state-level cuts or flat-funding that already had the industry reeling. And Congress is debating slashing billions more in Medicare funding as part...

The government option? Government controlled co-op? Beware of fluffy, cutsie-pie nice sounding 1,500 page bill amendments attached in the dead of night. Government sucess stories: Social Security Medicare Medicaid The Veterans Administration Above are four government run healthcare systems well run, well administered and loved by doctors and hospitals. After four successes like the ones listed above, let’s let them have government take over one more program and control all private doctors and private insurance. After all, they’ll base the new system on their previous successes.

On Sept. 23, Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., introduced H.R. 3631, which would freeze all Part B premiums for one year--including those for couples with incomes over $170,000. It would pay for the $2.8 billion cost by raiding the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund and the Medicare Improvement Fund. This legislation came up the following day and passed the House by a vote of 406 to 18. Of course, nothing is really paid for here. Federal borrowing will be $2.8 billion higher than it would otherwise be--and all to primarily benefit 2.1 million seniors who could very easily afford to...

VIDEO: On this episode of "The Senate Doctors Show," Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D., and Sen. John Barrasso, M.D., talk about the importance of reforming health care in a step-by-step manner to lower costs and expand access without raising your taxes or adding billions of dollars to the deficit. The Senate Doctors are joined by bloggers Ryan Grimm of the Huffington Post and David Weinberger of the Heritage Foundation.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today highlighted the irony of House Democratic Leaders holding a press conference to talk about “protecting Medicare” while pushing legislation that would cut Medicare by $500 billion. Boehner issued the following statement...

Rush to Rationing by: Brittany Fortier, September 30, 2009 Health Care Industry leaders are bent on transforming America’s doctor’s offices but vague on what will happen to folks in the lobby. On September 3, 2009, a panel discussed their expectations for the next 100 days of the debate. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, on a September 3, 2009 panel hosted by the Alliance for Health Reform (AHR), said that this is a “crucial time” to be having the health care discussion. She added that “having the equivalent of 24 states” without health care coverage was “unacceptable.”...

Come January, seniors may do a double take after seeing their Social Security checks. The 2% to 3% increase in benefits they usually get each year won't be there. The reason: For the first time in three decades, there likely won't be a cost-of-living adjustment. Though benefit amounts for 2010 won't shrink, with investment losses and lower home values, the lack of an increase will feel like a loss to many seniors. checks could be lower when factoring in premiums for Medicare Part B, which are deducted from monthly benefits. For most of the 42 million Part B beneficiaries, the...

In a recent WSJ interview, Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, estimated the present value of the unfunded liability of Medicare and Social Security to be in excess of $100 trillion, with actuarial reports showing them both close to insolvency. Thus our true National debt is more than ten times its reported size and currently there is no method to paying it down. If every earned dollar were paid in taxes, it still would not cover the expenditure. For the country to survive this impending bankruptcy, it has to immediately begin to shift health insurance to the...

The ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee is demanding answers from the government agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid after it ordered a private health insurance company to stop informing its enrollees about looming Medicare cuts under President Obama's healthcare plan. In a letter last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) informed Humana that it had launched an investigation of the health insurance company's marketing practices. CMS has also ordered Humana to stop telling its enrollees that President Obama's proposed healthcare plan could lower their Medicare Advantage benefits. Medicare Advantage plans are private plans...

Free Speech: The Senate votes against transparency as the administration silences a private insurer for exposing the president's health care proposal. Meanwhile, AARP is allowed to tout reform as it awaits payday. We weren't surprised when the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday voted 12 to 11 against allowing two weeks for the Congressional Budget Office to complete its cost analysis of the health care bill pushed by Montana Democrat Max Baucus and to put the bill online in its original wording. Instead, the Senate panel passed another amendment to require the committee to post the full bill online in "conceptual"...

The House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to eliminate monthly premium increases for millions of Medicare patients next year. It voted 406 to 18 to send the bill to the Senate, which is expected to act soon. Lawmakers said older Americans shouldn't have to pay higher Medicare Part B premiums because they are not expected to get a cost of living increase from Social Security. The vast majority of Medicare recipients already are exempt from Part B premium increases because of a hold-harmless provision that kicks in when there is no increase in Social Security. Still, several million would face monthly premium...

Sunday, in the midst of his "Everybody but Fox" Press tour President Obama talked about Medicare: Obama: "Look, I understand that change is hard. If what you're saying is that people who are currently signed up for Medicare advantage are going to have Medicare and the same level of benefits, but they may not be having their insurer get a 14 percent premium, that's absolutely true and will the insurers squawk? You bet." Stephanopoulos: "They may drop the coverage." Obama: "No, these folks are going to be able to get Medicare that is just as good, provides the same benefits,...

SILVER SPRING, Md. -- Vice President Joe Biden sought to reassure nervous seniors Wednesday that they won't see cuts in their Medicare benefits if the nation's health care system is revamped. "Nobody is going to mess with your benefits. All we do is make it better for people on Medicare," Biden told about 150 people at Leisure World in suburban Maryland. President Barack Obama and the White House contend that Medicare benefits won't be affected even though legislation in Congress would cut payments to Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.