Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Medicare cuts proposed under Pelosicare will lead to coverage crisis

Why don't they tell us something we didn't already know?

Noteworthy:
"The report offers the clearest and most authoritative assessment to date of the effect that Democratic health reform proposals would have on Medicare and Medicaid, the nation's largest public health programs. It analyzes the House bill, but the Senate is also expected to rely on hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts to finance the package that Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to take to the floor this week. Like the House, the Senate is expected to propose adding millions of people to Medicaid.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administers the two health-care programs. Foster's office acts as an independent technical adviser, serving both the administration and Congress. In that sense, it is similar to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which also has questioned the sustainability of proposed Medicare cuts.

In its most recent analysis of the House bill, the CBO noted that Medicare spending per beneficiary would have to grow at roughly half the rate it has over the past two decades to meet the measure's savings targets, a dramatic reduction that many budget and health policy experts consider unrealistic."

Of course, this information will fall on the deaf ears of the "Government Health Care Is The Answer" crowd.

They DON'T CARE how bad this thing is or how much it costs. They want it passed because they know that their Universal Health Care cherished Libthink agenda item will be an unstoppable conclusion once this hurdle is cleared.

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