Obamacare=Rationing and Waiting

The Obama Administration is trotting out more "experts" this week to try to save a healthcare bill that is becoming more and more unpopular with the American people. This news out of The White House today:

Today the White House is rolling out a new website that focuses on what reform really means for you and your family, debunks some common myths along the way and provides you with online tools and content to share the facts with friends, family and anyone else in your social network.

The first set of videos addresses a wide scope of topics and debunks some of those common myths:

CEA Chair Christina Romer details how health insurance reform will impact small businesses. Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes tackles a nasty rumor about euthanasia and clearly describes how reform helps families. Matt Flavin, the White House's Director of Veterans and Wounded Warrior Policy, clears the air about Veteran's benefits. Kavita Patel, M.D., a doctor serving in the White House's Office of Public Engagement, explains that health care rationing is happening right now and how reform gives control back to patients and doctors.

Robert Kocher, M.D., a doctor serving on the National Economic Council, debunks the myth that health insurance reform will be financed by cutting Medicare benefits. In a video first released last week, Linda Douglass from the White House Health Reform Office addresses fears about the end of our private insurance system and reiterates that if you like your current plan you can keep it. There is also a handy FAQ about health insurance reform.

This is nothing more than propaganda and lies to influence public opinion that is quickly eroding. Why is public opinion eroding you ask? Because people now have time to read the bill (that's why they wanted desparatly to pass it before the August recess). It's available for anyone to read. I suggest you read some of it.-Lou

Here is the entire bill: Heath Care Bill

The Truth About Obama's Health Care Plan

Posted on Friday at Heartland.org is my new comprehensive study: The Obama Health Plan: Rationing, Higher Taxes, and Lower Quality Care. The study explains in full detail, based on the pending Congressional legislation, exactly how the Obama health plan would impose government rationing that will deny you health care, severely restrict your freedom of choice and control over your health care, raise, not lower, health costs, impose sharp tax increases that would leave America uncompetitive in the world economy, and increase federal spending, deficits and debt.

The rationing begins with the dominant public option government health insurance plan, which is authorized in the legislation to follow the practices of Medicare and Medicaid in sharply underpaying doctors and hospitals. Medicare pays doctors 20% below market rates, and hospitals 30% below market. Medicaid pays 30% to 40% less than Medicare.

This power to underpay medical bills is the most important reason the government public option health insurance plan will eventually drive out the private competitors, leaving you without the choice of keeping your current insurance plan. Any private plans that do manage to survive will be able to do so only by adopting the practice of paying only what the government plan pays. So the government will end up dictating all payments to health providers in any event.

Doctors and hospitals will consequently begin to restrict their care to fit what the government will pay. Their practices will shrink to avoid the more expensive medical services and treatments that the government payments will not sufficiently cover.

These underpayment practices in turn will have dramatic, powerful effects on investment in the health care industry. Investors are not going to finance acquisition of the latest, most advanced equipment and technologies with the government slashing compensation for the services such technologies provide. Investors are also not going to finance expanded or new hospital facilities or clinics, or even the full maintenance of existing ones.

The supply of doctors, surgeons and specialists will also decline, just when demand for their services is soaring under the Obama health plan giveaways. Obama repeatedly says that under his health reform plan if you like your doctor you will be able to keep him or her. But the real question is whether under his reform plan your doctor will be willing to keep you, when the government refuses to pay adequately for the health care services you want and need.

This is how the long waiting lines for diagnostics, surgery, and other referrals begin to develop. This is why in other countries with national health plans or socialized medicine, facilities seem old, aged, and deteriorated.

Vast new realms of possible, innovative, new health services and care opened up by modern science will lag unutilized. Drug companies will also cut back sharply on investment in new, cutting edge, restorative, painsaving, or lifesaving miracle drugs. Many people will suffer or die unnecessarily as a result.

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