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Investors.com
Obama
Administration Dooms Seniors To Painful Aging
By Betsy McCaughey
10/12/2012
On
Oct. 1, the Obama administration started awarding bonus points
to hospitals that spend the least on elderly patients. It will result
in fewer
knee replacements, hip replacements, angioplasty, bypass surgery and
cataract
operations.
These
are the five procedures that have transformed aging for
older Americans. They used to languish in wheelchairs and nursing homes
due to
arthritis, cataracts and heart disease. Now they lead active lives.
But
the Obama administration is undoing that progress. By cutting
$716 billion from future Medicare funding over the next decade and
rewarding
the hospitals that spend the least on seniors, the Obama health law
will make
these procedures hard to get and less safe.
The
Obama health law creates two new entitlements for people under
age 65 — subsidies to buy private health plans and a vast expansion of
Medicaid. More than half the cost of these entitlements is paid for by
cutting
what hospitals, doctors, hospice care, home care and Advantage plans
are paid
to care for seniors.
Just
Take A Pill
Astoundingly,
doctors will be paid less to treat a senior than to
treat someone on Medicaid, and only about one-third of what a doctor
will be
paid to treat a patient with private insurance.
On
July 13, 2011, Richard Foster, chief actuary for Medicare,
warned Congress that seniors will have difficulty finding doctors and
hospitals
to accept Medicare. Doctors who do continue to take it will not want to
spend
time doing procedures such as knee replacements when the pay is so low.
Yet the
law bars them from providing care their patients need for an extra fee.
You're
trapped.
President
Obama seems to think too many seniors are getting these
procedures. At a town hall debate in 2009, he told a woman "maybe
you're
better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller."
Science
proves the president is wrong. Knee replacements, for
example, not only relieve pain but also save lives. Seniors with severe
osteoarthritis who opt for knee replacement are less apt to succumb to
heart
failure and have a 50% higher chance of being alive five years later
than
arthritic seniors who don't undergo the procedure, according to
peer-reviewed
scientific research.
Yet
Foster warned Congress that 15% of hospitals may stop treating
seniors once the Obama-Care cuts go into effect. The rest will have to
lower
the standard of care. Hospitals will have $247 billion less over the
next decade
to care for the same number of seniors as if the health law had not
been
enacted.
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