The Woodward Report
Obamacare and the Carenival Barkers
Medical Economics in Washington
August 9, 2009
by Jack Curtis - A Woodward Report Columnist
Obama and friends have fallback jobs as stand-up comics waiting should they ever lose their current ones. We’re solemnly assured that ObamaCare will:
1. Reduce costs, allowing 47 million more people to be
covered without increasing taxes except on “the rich.”
2. Improve care for everybody.
The script has additional jokes scattered through it but let’s stick with these two that my simple little mind can appreciate. The fundamental idea, government cost reduction freeing up money, is a chuckle to begin with from the creators of earmarks. If the government were capable of spending less, we wouldn’t be looking up at bailouts and deficits to the horizon and maybe, out into intergalactic space, now that everything is suddenly in trillions, right?
When this poor old columnist was in school, “to reduce” meant to shrink, to make less, to diminish. Government as a buyer, could only buy or not. So, to reduce costs meant to spend less. That was in those days, of course, I’m not quite sure exactly what it means now. If you spent less on medical care, you would get less care. Somebody in ObamaCare seems to believe that; the ObamaCare bill in Congress depends on specified cuts of hundreds of millions in Medicare and Medicaid spending to find some of its necessary money since taxing millionaires both annoys people you want campaign dough from, and runs through a fairly small population pretty fast.
When asked about how much less care Medicare and Medicaid clients will receive though, the carenival barkers just laugh, talk louder and tell another joke. It is pretty funny: the Associated Press had Democrats: “calling for hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts to help the uninsured get coverage” in the same story with: “Nobody is talking about reducing Medicare benefits, Obama said.” Unrelated subjects, right? Government can take money from some people to buy care for other people, but how will it manage that without reducing the care for the folks losing the money? Oh, price control laws? Like the ones that produced those long lines at gas pumps a decade or two ago? Government didn’t bring out its magic one hundred mile-per-gallon carburetor back then; does it really have a magic wand to create suddenly more efficient medical practices on the needed scale now? (Pause for more chuckles.) ,
The Associated Press on July 17th published: “White House wants more power to set Medicare rates.”Then, committed in loud, public terms to doing just that, from where will come not only care for more people but improved care for more people?
One more simple issue is boggling just now: If government spends less, doctors and hospitals will get less. The American Medical Association (AMA) and a major hospital group have already agreed to support that. As these guys rank only after schools in their relentless search for more government gravy, you might wonder why? A bit like we’re wondering what magic Bill Clinton used to get the sweet, friendly North Koreans to turn loose our two imprisoned ladies.
Doctors increasingly can’t afford their educations or the huge debts that hamstring them as they enter practice. Hospitals are increasingly losing money; Boston Medical is suing Massachusetts over the state’s reduction in Medicaid reimbursements, expected to produce a $100 million deficit at the hospital next year before ObamaCare works its magic savings, according to the New York Times. Hmnn…Investors’ Business Daily wrote its answer in July, 2009: “The deal would include provisions limiting physician-owned hospitals.” See, these, also called private hospitals, are too competitive; they threaten traditional hospitals. The House version of Obamacare stops the creation of new ones and limits the growth of existing ones. Eliminating competition is well known to save money, right?
I remember an old story about a farm boy raising a calf steer. He had the idea that if he practiced lifting the calf every day, he would grow stronger as it grew and end up a very strong man, in line with an ancient legend. When challenged on the story, he admitted that he also reduced the steer’s food a little each day to help out. Asked how it went, he said: “ It went pretty well for quite a while; I was getting stronger all the time right up until I had that steer’s diet down to one straw a day…but then the ungrateful beast up and died on me.”
Congress’ own budget folks haven’t figured this one out either; they say that they see a trillion and a half more dollars needed for this over ten years but Congress’ proposed “rich taxes” can pony up only about a third of it. Nobody seems to say where the missing $trillion will come from.
Don’t ask questions! Just smile and sign on the dotted line…Congress and Obama will fill in the rest for you later…You trust them, don’t you? Then, go into the tent and enjoy the show!
COPYRIGHT 2009 Jack Curtis
