You thought you knew how bad Obamacare was? Think again

H/T to Loopyloo My Blog via Flopping Aces

Impeach Obama! Liars, Cheaters and Thieves

Each year, Congress holds a sword of Damocles over the heads of the medical profession. The “doc fix” is a budget adjustment to bring Medicare fees into the world of reality. democrats love to omit it for the sake of appearances.

Obamacare cuts $716 billion from Medicare. Obama calls it “waste.” Physicians call it reimbursement. What that will do is make finding Medicare providers far more difficult.

The AMA supported Obamacare, on the promise that the law would include a permanent “doc fix.” But Democrats reneged on that promise, owing to the cost of a permanent SGR adjustment: something on the order of $200 billion over ten years, depending on the prescribed growth rate of the fees.

Instead, the Affordable Care Act further reduced fees to health care providers, by $415 billion over the 2013-2022 time frame. As these reductions go into effect, more and more physicians are certain to stop taking new Medicare patients. We already see this problem with the Medicaid program for low-income Americans, where doctors don’t accept Medicaid patients, leading to poor health outcomes.

The Obama campaign offers several lame defenses of these cuts. “The President’s plan doesn’t cut [benefits] by one dime,” insists deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter. “He ends taxpayer subsidies to insurance companies, and weeds out waste, fraud, and abuse, which saves the Medicare system $716 billion.”

But Cutter’s assertion the law doesn’t cut benefits only makes sense if you don’t count getting a doctor’s appointment as a “benefit.” And her argument that the provider cuts merely amount to eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” displays a callous disregard for how the law’s blunt, across-the-board payment reductions affect doctors like Joseph Shanahan, and seniors like Beverly Frake.

About that “free” exam Obama promised you:

If you are here for that annual exam, you will not be covered if you want to discuss any new ailment or unstable condition. I cannot bait and switch to another code — that’s illegal. We, the physicians, are audited all the time and can lose our license for insurance fraud. Read more…

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