Free Markets: Eye on Entitlements
ObamaCare’s Patient Dumping Scheme Helen Sabin, Contributing Writer Seniors who depend on Medicare for their health care needs are in for a rude awakening. With ObamaCare stealing its funding from Medicare to pay for the millions of new patients coming on board for medical care, there simply isn’t enough money to provide quality coverage for everyone. Seniors, often considered expendable in the health care world, are at risk of being dumped. Lies about health care abound in the Obama household. One huge lie, called ObamaCare, is based on the Urban Health Initiative, 2007 program by the University of Chicago Medical Center. The initiative was devised by David Axelrod, President Obama’s current senior advisor, and First Lady Michelle Obama, who at the time was vice president for the University of Chicago Medical Center. It has, as its core, a patient dumping scheme. The Chicago project was a plan to drive away indigent and uninsured patients from the hospital so it wouldn’t suffer a loss of profitability treating them. ObamaCare is set up the same way. Seniors, low income persons and the poor will be “dumped” into clinics or medical facilities equivalent to the Urban Health Initiative centers, described by the doctors working at them as something out of a Third World country. There simply will not be money for quality healthcare for seniors and others, as Congress has already siphoned off $500 billion to pay for ObamaCare, and will
continue to divert money to pay for other programs they want to get passed before the November 2010 elections. Quality health care in the United States, according to Washington Post op-ed writer Charles Krauthammer, is fictional for these fragile income groups. “The nation is now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks -- the unfunded $200 billion-plus doctor fix, the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight of hand which counts 10 years of revenue and only six years of outflows -- is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement,” Krauthammer states. The question is, who pays for the entitlements? The answer is Medicare funds and new taxes. ObamaCare was built on a house of cards funding structure that is poised to implode. Too many are dependent on the government while not enough taxes are coming in to balance the ratio. Hidden behind the false façade of ObamaCare as presented by the President and Congress are the same side effects suffered by the Urban Health Initiative: high costs, debt, poor health care, long lines, rationing and unequal access to medical personnel. Bruce Schobel, a health care expert and president-elect of the American Academy of Actuaries, states, “It’s no stretch to imagine sick seniors being turned away at
ObamaCare was built on a house of cards funding structure that is poised to implode.
the doctor’s door in the future. No cash, no service. Be sick somewhere else!” Schobel adds, “Rather than strip billions from Medicare, if the Obama administration and Congress doesn’t fix it immediately, the retirees by the millions coming up starting this year will have to buy their own private health coverage or promise to pay their doctors themselves.” Those who can’t pay outside what Medicare might cover will be sent elsewhere, but at this point no one knows where. Many doctors are closing their practices or are not taking Medicare patients. This includes the Mayo Clinic’s Outreach Clinic. The enticing myth of quality health care for all is just that - a myth. So is the claim made by the President proclaiming that ObamaCare is a “victory for common sense.” The “common sense” part of his statement is easy to figure out. Dump seniors and the poor to protect the bottom line. Save the money for those who are productive (pay taxes). The “victory” is for
Congress who desires, as Vice President Joe Biden explains, to “spread the wealth around.” His statement is echoed by other top ranking Democrats. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, head of the Senate Health Committee, has said, “Health reform is ‘an income shift. It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower income, middle income Americans.” Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and DNC chairman, declared “The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top… and those at the bottom? This [health care bill] is a form of redistribution.” For President Obama and his compliant Congress who will control the purse strings, the juicy funds just sitting in the Medicare pot are as much of a temptation to use to control Americans and their health care as the money from insurance companies was an incentive for Michelle to dump patients. Mischief is alive and well in the Obama household, and so are the lies.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. —Winston Churchill
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