It was months ago that Obama vilified doctors and basically called them greedy:
“Right now, doctors, a lot of times, are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that’s out there. So if you come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat, or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, ‘You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out.’ Now, that may be the right thing to do, but I’d rather have that doctor making those decisions just based on whether you really need your kid’s tonsils out or whether it might make more sense just to change, maybe they have allergies, maybe they have something else that would make a difference.”
~~~“All I’m saying is let’s take an example of something like diabetes, one of, a disease that’s skyrocketing, partly because of obesity, partly because it’s not treated as effectively as it could be. Right now, if we paid a family, if a family care physician works with his or her patients to help them lose weight, modify diet, monitors whether they’re taking their medications in a timely fashion, they might get reimbursed a pittance. But if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that’s $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, immediately the surgeon is reimbursed. Well, why not make sure that we’re also reimbursing the care that prevents the amputation, right? That will save us money.”
But still the AMA and the insurance industry backed his disastrous socialism.
Are they starting to wake up?:
The industry heavyweights President Obama neutralized through the summer are agitating that the health-care bills in Congress violate agreements they made with the White House, leave 25 million Americans uninsured and have the potential to increase medical costs.
One day after Democrats celebrated the news that a bill drafted in the Senate Finance Committee would not increase the deficit, the prospects for speedy enactment of landmark reform grew murkier. Industry leaders, who have held their tongues for months, spoke in increasingly dire tones Thursday about the impact of the Democratic proposals, raising the specter of an eleventh-hour lobbying campaign to defeat Obama’s centerpiece domestic policy goal.
Many lobbyists and independent analysts underlined what they called major flaws in the Finance Committee’s bill, saying it probably would draw the sickest, most expensive patients into the health coverage system without balancing the insurance risk with more young, healthy people. The result, they predicted, would be ever-rising premiums for the people, businesses and governments that pay for medical care.
“The consequences of this would be an upward spiral; rate shock to everyone who stays in,” said Karen Ignagni, president of the industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans. “This legislation will fail the test of affordability for individuals.”
They’re worried about the device tax which is estimated to be about $38 billion over 10 years which most of us regular folk don’t understand…but physicians do:
As a pathologist, there are numerous things that are being overlooked, probably because the general public doesn’t understand. If you look at the 49 page list of medical devices, there are a bunch of laboratory items. If you look at the codes, HE is hematology, CH is chemistry, IM is immunology, TX is toxicology, AN is analyzer…The analyzers or laboratory instruments are taxed. The calibrators to calibrate the analyzers are taxed. The controls which are known samples that are run 3 times a day to ensure that the analyzer is working are taxed. Numerous testing assays which include the reagents to run the test are taxed. So you could be looking at one lab test having a tax on the analyzer (granted most analyzers run more than one test, but not always), calibrators taxed, controls taxed and reagents taxed. Hell, they even tax the rack to hold the tube for a hematocrit. See hematocrit, tube, rack, sealer, holder. Costs will go up across the board for lab work. CBC, chemistries, blood typing, viral testing, coagulation studies, immunoassay for troponin to see if someone is having a heart attack and on and on. It is truly amazing.
They’re worried about the fact that would….gasp!….actually cost them more.
“Without the addition of the millions of young and healthy Americans who now choose to forgo coverage . . . the requirement that insurers insure all comers . . . would actually backfire — resulting in higher premiums and more instability for the middle class,” wrote researchers at the Third Way, a centrist Democratic group.
But I think what they are most worried about is that they can’t trust Obama.
We all saw this early on, but they were duped, as was 52% of the country.
See author page
And thus the reason the next incarnation is being done behind closed doors…They don’t want anyone to see the fineprint, be it doctors or potential patients.
What this means to the lab, since control and calibrators are extremely expensive, will be a reduction in services provided by hospital laboratories. Sending out tests to a reference lab will be the norm, not the exception. Anytime you send a test out, you lose control of quality assurance. Back in the day, when I was a college student, I worked part time at Smith Kline (now Quest) and ran PT and PTT’s that in any other lab would have been rejected due to low volume of sample. I witnessed a tech run a CBC that was found inside the front panel of Beckman Coulter CBC analyzer. How long was it sitting there, I’ve no idea. Oh, and I loved how a chem tech would supervise the pouring off of serum into analyzer sample cups by lab aides. When a discrepancy was brought to her attention; the tech would simply compare the color of serum left in the tube to what was poured into a sample cup and be on her merry way.
These are but a few issues that Hospitals are unaware of when they send samples to a reference lab. Adding additional costs to the basic materials in the lab will drive labs to increase their send out to reference labs, and in doing so, reduce the number of full time techs as well.
Don’t get me started about the increased turn around time for test results…
Obamacare is bad medicine.
And to add to Curt’s final paragraphs about backfiring without the young and healthy, plus PatVann’s “thus the reason for the back door”, it’s also the reason they are merging it with the HELP July bill that mandates all Americans *will* buy insurance (or be fined/penalized), and all employers *will* contribute to their employees buying insurance.
Rather like the other Ponzi schemes we have in effect, the young, and those who wish to purchase the cadillac supplementary coverage, are to support Obama/Pelosi/Reid’s grand experiment.
Yeah… pay higher taxes, be mandated into purchasing insurance… that all sounds “more affordable”.
We are not even looking at the unintended consequences 1 being 2 tiered medical care. One for the people with enough money to buy better care and 1 tier for the people standing in line. The other being the black market of drugs, devices, and services that may be inferior but people will be willing to pay their life savings to provide comfort to their ills. You cannot stifle capitalism.
Halfacarafe
There would be three tiers instead of two. 1) for the ones who can afford better care, 2) for the executive, legislative and judicial bureaucracies an the unions and 3) for the rest of us.
Where does Obama get the idea that doctors can control their patients’ lives? Doctors can talk themselves blue in the face but unless their patients want to change their habits nothing will be done. That is called freedom of choice. Something Obama and his minions want to take away from us.
Since when can the federal government tell us we must buy health insurance? This healthcare mess is not within the realm of the federal government. This is a state issue. The Constitution says plainly that the powers that are not directly awarded to the feds are awarded to the states and there is nothing in the Constitution about health insurance. I am tired of the dems parsing the language to suit their agenda. It seems nothing means anything any more. They push and push to see how far they can go and guess what, they have gone very far indeed.
@BLOCK THIS
*snif, snif*
Smells like fake Marine to me.
Idiots! The AMA, the drug companies, all the idiots that thought they made a deal with administration were obviously asleep during Obama’s campaign. They obviously missed the fine print with the expiration dates.