Posted on 04/25/2010 6:54:16 PM PDT by freespirited
When President Obama signed his health-care reform last month, he declared it will "lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government." So why are Democrats scrambling to pass a new bill that would impose price controls on insurance?
In now-they-tell-us hearings on Tuesday, the Senate health committee debated a bill that would give states the power to reject premium increases that state regulators determine are "unreasonable."
Some 27 states currently have some form of rate review , but generally don't leverage it because insolvent insurers are expensive for states and bankruptcies limit consumer choices. One exception is Massachusetts: Governor Patrick is now using this power to create de facto price controls and assail the state's insurers as cover for the explosive costs resulting from the ObamaCare prototype the State passed in 2006.
National Democrats now want power to do the same across the country, because they know how unrealistic their cost-control claims really are. Democrats are petrified they'll get the blame they deserve when insurance costs inevitably spike. ...
Most of ObamaCare's unrealistic "savings" come from cranking down the way Medicare calculates its price controls, ... 15% of hospital budgets may be driven into deficits, "possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries." Isn't reform grand?
The official who will preside over this fiscal trainwreck is Donald Berwick, the Harvard professor who the White House has nominated to run Medicare. Berwick explained last year that the British National Health Service has "developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn." He added that "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Methinks an awful lot of people would consider the rationing committee a death panel.
Me too..price controls didn’t work for the peanut farmer.
The list, ping
The WH will still insist that there will be no rationing and that the only people who question their lies are a bunch of racist teabaggers.
The truth has no place in this whole nightmare of the Obama cabal.
Congress blatantly and deliberately lied to pass this abomination. Anything done under false pretenses is a felony. Arrest everyone who voted for 0bambiCare.
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