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The deficit reduction depends in large part on reduced medicare payments to providers, coincidentally we already have similar legislation that was passed in the 90's...
Quote:
Doctors brace for possible big Medicare pay cuts | Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/13/2010 (http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20101113_Doctors_brace_for_possible_big_Medicare_p ay_cuts.html - broken link)
WASHINGTON - Breast-cancer surgeon Kathryn Wagner has posted a warning in her waiting room about a different sort of risk to patients' health: She will stop taking new Medicare cases if Congress allows looming cuts in doctors' compensation to go through...
...lawmakers in the 1990s devised a formula for payment cuts intended as an automatic braking system to keep Medicare humming along at a sustainable growth rate.
But every time health-care costs went up, the legislators hit the override button to block the payment cuts.
They just keep kicking the problem down the road. What makes you think this will be any different? The law simply expects these providers to become more efficient and accept the cuts. HHS has correctly called them "unrealistic". If the providers stop accepting medicare patients because they can no longer afford to treat them you know as well as I do Congress is going to back out of this provision and the deficit reduction will evaporate. <poof>
It is important to note that the estimated savings shown in this memorandum for one category of
Medicare provisions may be unrealistic. The PPACA introduces permanent annual productivity
adjustments to price updates for most providers (such as hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and
home health agencies), using a 10-year moving average of economy-wide private, non-farm
productivity gains. While such payment update reductions will create a strong incentive for
providers to maximize efficiency, it is doubtful that many will be able to improve their own
productivity to the degree achieved by the economy at large.Over time, a sustained reduction
in payment updates, based on productivity expectations that are difficult to attain, would cause
Medicare payment rates to grow more slowly than, and in a way that was unrelated to, the providers’
costs of furnishing services to beneficiaries. Thus, providers for whom Medicare
constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and,
absent legislative intervention, might end their participation in the program (possibly
jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries). Simulations by the Office of the Actuary suggest
that roughly 15 percent of Part A providers would become unprofitable within the 10-year
projection period as a result of the productivity adjustments. Although this policy could be
monitored over time to avoid such an outcome, changes would likely result in smaller actual
savings than shown here for these provisions.
The debt has already exploded under their control in the last 4 years.
Just for the record: We went into debt in 2002 - under Republican control of the entire federal government. I'm amazed that so many Republican partisans forget this fact.
Any CDer who claims to know what will happen if Obamacare is repealed or not repealed is lying. No one here has any idea what would happen. That is why I will let the experts and the economists figure that out.
We have threads on Dems warning the right not to raise the debt ceiling or it will be a catastrophe.
Now the Dems are warning the right the repealing ObamaCare would explode the debt.
Isn't that what they want? The debt has already exploded under their control in the last 4 years.
All politics, no common sense.
Dems are liars. The numbers came back as being wrong that the Democrats claimed about Obamacare saving money. It in fact GREATLY grows the deficit. No one is surprised by that though. It was just a socialist grab of a sixth of the USA economy.
So many partisan "yes men" on these forums. Everyone thinks they are an economist.
I think it's funny that the Dems still have a reputation of not having fiscal sense. Last time I checked, the Republicans have NOT been the "fiscally conservative" party for the last 22 years.
And that might be the problem. Neither Pubs or Dems are very fiscally conservative.
The economy is a complicated thing, and it DOES NOT work like your bank account. You can't apply the same rules to the federal defecit and to federal spending that you apply to your own finances. That's like comparing a Bicycle to a Boeing 747. Yeah, they both get you where you want to go, but they are 2 totally different things.
And do you know what they say? It doesn't go far enough, but it's better than nothing.
Our healthcare system is a DISASTER.
We have the best one in the world, yet it is a disaster? I think what the problem is that many want lots of service and the best of care for $2. Can't happen.
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