Health Wars (9/23/09)

Guess what you get when you cut half a trillion dollars out of Medicare over the next decade.

Barack Obama and the Donk Collective insist all you get is "savings".  According to the Congressional Budget Office, what you get is....benefit cuts.  And plenty of 'em:

Congress’ chief budget officer on Tuesday contradicted President Barack Obama’s oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn’t see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.

The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators that seniors in Medicare’s managed care plans could see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.

The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over ten years.

Elmendorf said the changes “would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans.”

Shawn Bishop, a probably-soon-to-be-former Senate Finance Committee staffer, was indiscrete enough to testify to same during the recent BaucusCare version whatever-the-heck-it-is markup.  Guess it just doesn't pay to let either honesty or common sense into the room when government sausage is being ground.

Ensign Ed remembered the same thing I did:

It’s also worth noting that when previous administrations attempted to cut Medicare spending by much lower amounts, Democrats would scream from the rafters about Republicans trying to steal Medicare away from seniors.  In this case, the CBO confirms that Democrats have engaged in projection.

It's more egregious than that, actually, because Republicans never - NOT ONCE - proposed "cutting" Medicare, but rather proposed slowing the rate of increase in Medicare spending.  That was the extent of the fiscal modifications Newt Gingrich proposed back in 1995, in an effort to PRESERVE the program from the bankruptcy toward which it's tottering, currently estimated for 2017.  And for his troubles he and his party were denounced as plotters of a senior citizen Holocaust for the next year and a half.

But now here comes Dr. Chicago proposing not slowing the growth of Medicare spending, but gutting it by around an overall 15% over the next decade, and yet somehow Medicare benefits will remain untouched.

What I want to know is, where can I procure that magic wand?  I have a few election results from last November that need correction....

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It bears mentioning that Elmendorf's and Bishop's congressional testimony completely vindicates the information that Humana, Inc. communicated to its policyholders, for which Senator Baucus and the Obama Health & Human Services Department teamed up to threaten to stomp the insurance carrier into chunky salsa on the grounds that, so Baucus mendatiously charged, Humana was "spreading disinformation to seniors".

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had a few things to say about that that qualify as "shots over the bow":

Amen, Mitchie the Kid.  If telling the truth about BarryCare is to be rendered functionally illegal BEFORE it's enacted, how big will the jackboot get thereafter?

I wonder how long it'll be before Senator McConnell hears that late-night rapping at HIS door - and when we can expect each of ours.

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Culture of Corruption, anyone?:

Am I missing something here?  This Obama-Big Pharma quid pro quo isn't new; it's been known for several months now.  Or at least I THOUGHT it was.  Their BarryCare hit is limited to eighty billion bucks in exchange for running $150 million smackers worth of pro-BarryCare TV shilling.  Maybe it's just my ingrained cynicism that instantly made the connection and assumed that everybody else had as well.  Although I don't think THAT much cyncism is required to connect THESE dots.

Regardless, Senator Carper seems to have let a cat out of a bag by coming out in public view and acknowleding the quid pro quo, perhaps because he made the same assumption I did.  The interesting thing about his words is that he is defending the deal on the grounds that "a deal's a deal" and to turn around and double-cross Big Pharma now would be....oh, I don't know, "unethical" or something.  "Foolhardy" seems more like it, since that would pretty much finish the de-neutralization of the health care corporate players that Red Barry had either on board or cowed into cowering submission not that long ago, and at the worst possible time given BarryCare's fading pulse.

Also foolhardy because it widens the gap between the extreme left and Blue Dog "centrists," as the former are outraged - OUTRAGED! - that their god and master may have cut a deal with those evil corporate robber barons instead of pounding them into the ground like fence posts, and OF COURSE they should be betrayed and shafted.  Whereas the latter are recoiling from the fact that this "secret deal" looks an awful lot like "bribery and violation of campaign-finance laws".

And once again I am left sitting here shaking my head with the same question on my lips: What else did you people expect from Barack Obama?  A man who doesn't recognize any limitations on his power, and who believes himself both a god and entitled to ALL the spoils of victory ("I won...") is going to help himself to whatever he wants and cut any "secret deals" that suit his greedy, megalomaniacal fancy - and then throw them under the bus when they don't suit that fancy anymore.

Are the petaQ'pu at FireDogLake willing to support an impeachment inquiry against The One for what they clearly see as a betrayal of THEIR principles?  Until they do, their wicked indignation can be considered as worthless as a Barack Obama promise.

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Meanwhile, for all the Donks' escalatingly frantic, flailing efforts, the American public - you rememer US, don't you? - keep turning more overwhelmingly against BarryCare.

Both negatively...:

Less popular with 2010 voters is a key provision in Senator Max Baucus’, D-MT, recently unveiled health care bill that would require all Americans to purchase health insurance or face a hefty fine. A clear majority of voters in competitive Senate races (68%) oppose such a provision, as do 70% of voters in competitive House races.

Also unpopular is the so-called “employer mandate,” which would require large and small businesses to provide health insurance to their employees or face a fine. Fifty-nine percent of voters in competitive Senate races oppose the “employer mandate,” as do 60% of voters in competitive House races.

....and positively:

Americans are broadly satisfied with the quality of their own medical care and healthcare costs, but of the two, satisfaction with costs lags. Overall, 80% are satisfied with the quality of medical care available to them, including 39% who are very satisfied. Sixty-one percent are satisfied with the cost of their medical care, including 20% who are very satisfied.

There is a clear gulf in these perceptions between the health insurance haves and have-nots. According to a September 11-13 USA Today/Gallup poll, the 85% of Americans with health insurance coverage are broadly satisfied with the quality of medical care they receive and with their healthcare costs. At 79%, satisfaction with costs among Medicare/Medicaid recipients is particularly high.

The 15% who are uninsured are far less satisfied with the quality of their medical care (50% are satisfied), and only 27% are satisfied with their healthcare costs. (Sixty-nine percent are dissatisfied with their costs.)

Things to note about this particular poll:

1) It's of "adults," not "likely voters," meaning the satisfaction level" with the current health care system is certainly higher with those who actually vote, which, in combination with the Zogby results, shows the even greater lethality for Blue Dogs of blowing off their constituents and bowing down to The One.

2) The demographic least satisfied with health care costs are the uninsured, who, not coincidentally, is the one group in this country that actually pays all out-of-pocket for medical services like we ALL should.  Their solution isn't forcing the rest of us to pay for their coverage, but to scrap the entire third-party-payment mechanism that has completely distorted the health care market and sent costs spiralling out of control in the first place, not eliminate the private sector portion that is the only thing keeping quality health care for 95% of us available.

I look back on August and marvel at the public rebellion simply at THE ATTEMPT to confiscate our health care and shove BarryCare down our throats instead.  Then I contemplate a jam-down this fall anyway and contemplate the mass public rage that will ensue from that.  And I wonder: are there truly enough Blue Dogs in either chamber that will risk not only the destruction of their fledgling political careers, but the damage to the body politic as well?