By Peter Ferrara
The American Spectator
October 14, 2009
“This bill is paid for,” Senator Max Baucus grinned upon receiving the CBO report scoring his government health care takeover bill as slightly reducing rather than increasing the deficit. But Baucus does not tell you who is paying for it.
CBO scores the Baucus bill as increasing federal spending by close to $1 trillion. That is entirely paid for by Medicare cuts and tax increases, including tax increases on the middle class which Obama pledged over and over would never happen, “in any form,” if he was elected. The New York Times and the Democrats are now trying to tell us that this means the bill and its government handouts are free…
…The Baucus bill includes specific, overt, government health care rationing, which the Obama Administration has already begun to implement under existing legal authority. Baucus’s bill provides that the top 10% of doctors who spend the most in Medicare funds on their patients will automatically be penalized with reduced compensation for the services they provide to seniors under Medicare…
…the Obama Administration is already using its existing regulatory authority under Medicare to get the rationing started. As the Wall Street Journal reported on October 6, “Democrats are systematically attacking specific medical fields like cardiology and oncology[cancer treatment].” The just adopted Medicare payment rules for next year impose “an 11% overall cut on cardiology and 19% on radiation oncology.”…
…”Payments for diagnostic imaging services like MRIs and CT scans that help identify cancer early would also be cut by 24%. Payments for antitumor radiation therapy will be cut by 44%. The American Society for Radiation Oncology says in the Journal that these cuts “will have a devastating effect on cancer patients’ access to care.”
…”The Baucus bill will cause health insurance premiums to soar, as a new Price Waterhouse study confirmed on Monday. The study shows that an average family health insurance policy costing $12,300 today will explode under the bill to $17,200 by 2013, $21,300 by 2016, and $25,900 by 2019.” …
Read the entire article here.
