Death To America, ObamaCare-Style: ObamaCare Already A Nightmare For Doctors, Soon To Be A Nightmare For Poor, Sick Patients

Remember how Barack Hussein Obama said over and over and over again that if you like your doctor, his ObamaCare would allow you to keep your doctor, and if you like your health plan, his ObamaCare would allow you to keep your health plan?

He lied.  And in the minimum of 37 times he lied on that issue alone, Barack Obama became the most documented liar in all of human history as he looked more than 300 million Americans in the eye and lied like the hell that he is again and again and again.  It was “the lie of the year,” and you’ve got to be a world-class demon-possessed liar to emerge out of all the lies that we are told in this country today.

But that was hardly this demon-possessed liar’s only lie about ObamaCare.  Obama promised his ObamaCare would help doctors, that it would help poor, sick patients, that it would bend the cost curve for healthcare down.

All lies.

Here’s an article from Saturday’s USA Today that exposes these lies (it appeared in my print edition under the title, “Maddened by metrics”):

Quality payment incentives: What’s the point?
Jordan Rau, Kaiser Health News 6 a.m. EDT April 4, 2015

Dr. Michael Kitchell initially welcomed the federal government’s new quality incentives for doctors. His medical group in Iowa has always scored better than most in the quality reports that Medicare has provided doctors in recent years, he said.

But when the government launched a new payment system that will soon apply to all physicians who accept Medicare, Kitchell’s McFarland Clinic in Ames didn’t win a bonus. In fact, there are few winners: Out of 1,010 large physician groups that the government evaluated, just 14 are getting payment increases this year, according to Medicare. Losers also are scarce. Only 11 groups will be getting reductions for low quality or high spending.

“We performed well, but not enough for the bonus,” said Kitchell, a neurologist. “My sense of disappointment here is really significant. Why even bother?”

Within three years, the Obama administration wants quality of care to be considered in allocating $9 of every $10 Medicare pays directly to providers to treat the elderly and disabled. One part of that effort is well underway: revising hospital payments based on excess readmissions, patient satisfaction and other quality measures. Expanding this approach to physicians is touchier, as many are suspicious of the government judging them and reluctant to share performance metrics that Medicare requests.

“Without having any indication that this is improving patient care, they just keep piling on additional requirements,” said Mark Donnell, an anesthesiologist in Silver City, N.M. Donnell said he only reports a third of the quality measures he is expected to. “So much of what’s done in medicine is only done to meet the requirements,” he said.

The new financial incentive for doctors, called a physician value-based payment modifier, allows the federal government to boost or lower the amount it reimburses doctors based on how they score on quality measures and how much their patients cost Medicare. How doctors rate this year will determine payments for more than 900,000 physicians by 2017.

Medicare is easing doctors into the program, applying it this year only to medical groups with at least 100 health professionals, including doctors, nurses, speech-language pathologists and occupational therapists. Next year, the program expands Medicare to groups of 10 or more health professionals. In 2017, all remaining doctors who take Medicare — along with about 360,000 other health professionals — will be included. By early in the next decade, 9% of the payments Medicare makes to doctors and other professionals would be at risk under a bill that the House of Representatives passed in March.

The quality metrics used to judge doctors vary by specialty. One test looks at how consistently doctors keep an accurate list of all the drugs patients were taking. Others track the rate of complications after cataract surgery, say, or whether patients received recommended treatments for particular cancers.

There are more than 250 quality measures. Groups and doctors must report a selection — generally nine, which they choose — or else be automatically penalized. This year, 319 large medical groups are having their reimbursements reduced by 1% because they did not meet Medicare’s reporting standards.

Physicians who do report their quality data fear the measures are sometimes misguided, usually a hassle, and may encourage doctors to avoid poorer and sicker patients, who tend to have more trouble controlling asthma or staying on antidepressants, for instance.

Leanne Chrisman-Khawam, a primary care doctor in Cleveland, said many of her patients have difficulty just getting to follow-up appointments, since they must take two or three buses. She said those battling obesity or diabetes are less likely to reform their diets to emphasize fresh foods, which are expensive and less available in poor neighborhoods. “You’re going to link that physician’s payment to that life?” she asked.

Hamilton Lempert, an emergency room doctor in Cincinnati, criticized one measure that requires him to track how often he follows up with patients with high blood pressure.

“Most everyone’s blood pressure is elevated in the emergency department because they’re anxious,” Lempert said. Another metric encourages testing the heart’s electrical impulses in patients with non-traumatic chest pain, which Lempert said has led emergency rooms to give priority to these cases over more serious ones.

“It’s just very frustrating, the things we have to do to jump through the hoops,” he said.

In the first year doctors are affected by the program, they can choose to forgo bonuses or penalties based on their performances. After that, the program is mandatory. This year, 564 groups opted out, but even if all of them had been included, only 3% would have gotten increases and 38% would have seen lower payments, mostly for not satisfactorily reporting quality measures, Medicare data show.

Smaller groups and solo practitioners are even less likely to report quality to the government. “The participation rates, even though it’s mandated, are just really low,” said Dr. Alyna Chien, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. It’s “a level of analytics that just is not typically built into a doctor’s office.”

Dr. Lisa Bielamowicz, chief medical officer of The Advisory Board, a consulting group, predicted more doctors will start reporting their quality scores when the prospect of fines is greater. “They are not going to motivate until it is absolutely necessary,” she said. “If you look at these small practices, a lot of them just run on a shoestring.”

This year’s assessments of big groups were based on patients seen in 2013. A total of $11 million of the $1.2 billion Medicare pays doctors is being given out as bonuses, which translates to a 5% payment increase for those 14 groups getting payment increases this year. That money came from low performers and those that did not report quality measures to Medicare’s satisfaction; they are losing up to 1%.

The exact amount any of these groups lose will depend on the number and nature of the services they provide over the year. This year, 268 medical groups were exempted because at least one of their doctors was participating in one of the government’s experiments in providing care differently.

Officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services declined to be interviewed about the program, but said in a prepared statement that they have been providing all doctors with reports showing their quality and costs. “We hope that this information will provide meaningful and actionable information to physicians so that they may improve the coordination and integration of the health care provided to beneficiaries,” the statement said.

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

How the hell do you think fining doctors – who are already operating on a shoestring – for not doing something that massively increases their costs because making those reports is very obviously not something they are equipped to do, is going to lower the cost of healthcare?  Are you really that stupid that you believe it will???

Doctors are frustrated and getting more and more frustrated.  We’ve already seen them retiring at the highest rate since Hippocrates was working on his oath millennia ago.  It’s been going on since the damn evil law passed and it’s going to pick up speed.  We’re seeing fewer and fewer doctors left to service larger and larger networks of patients.  Now they are increasingly dropping out of ObamaCare and its reporting requirements as fast as they can.  How in the hell is that supposed to improve patient care?  Are you really that stupid that you believe it will???

You’ve got to love this prophetic title from CBS News that heralds future doom:

Obamacare 2015: Higher costs, higher penalties

With the Affordable Care Act to start enrollment for its second year on Nov. 15, some unpleasant surprises may be in store for some.

That’s because a number of low-priced Obamacare plans will raise their rates in 2015, making those options less affordable. On top of that, penalties for failing to secure a health-insurance plan will rise steeply next year, which could take a big bite out of some families’ pocketbooks.

“The penalty is meant to incentivize people to get coverage,” said senior analyst Laura Adams of InsuranceQuotes.com. “This year, I think a lot of people are going to be in for a shock.”

Oops.  Sorry, poor people.  It sort of looks like Obama and his demonic minions didn’t actually give a DAMN about you, after all.

But the real lie – the lie that makes “Democrat” truly stand for “DEMOn-possessed bureauCRAT” – is the one about helping the poor and the sick get better access to medical care.  Let me replay the lines from the article:

Physicians who do report their quality data fear the measures are sometimes misguided, usually a hassle, and may encourage doctors to avoid poorer and sicker patients, who tend to have more trouble controlling asthma or staying on antidepressants, for instance.

Leanne Chrisman-Khawam, a primary care doctor in Cleveland, said many of her patients have difficulty just getting to follow-up appointments, since they must take two or three buses. She said those battling obesity or diabetes are less likely to reform their diets to emphasize fresh foods, which are expensive and less available in poor neighborhoods. “You’re going to link that physician’s payment to that life?” she asked.

Barack Obama – in his wickedness – has designed a system that pits doctors against the poorest, sickest patients.  The doctor can treat them, sure, but only if he or she is willing to pay severely for it and be punished for it by an evil system that promised to do the very opposite of what it is in fact doing.

Barack Obama looks down on that doctor from his satanic Mt. Olympus and he sees a doctor whose stats aren’t up to muster because that doctor is treating sick patients who will tend to get sicker even with the very best of care.  And Obama decrees, “That doctor must be punished!”  And the fines and the penalties start kicking in.  Better to just leave that poor, sick patient on the side of the road, modern-day Good Samaritan physician.  Because Obama will come after you with all the power of totalitarian government arbitrariness if you try to help that patient.

Here’s another demonic DEMOnic bureauCRAT lie for you: Obama promised fewer people would use emergency rooms; when the very OPPOSITE is happening BECAUSE OF HIS DEMONIC LAW as USA TODAY documents:

More patients flocking to ERs under Obamacare

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It wasn’t supposed to work this way, but since the Affordable Care Act took effect in January, Norton Hospital has seen its packed emergency room become even more crowded, with about 100 more patients a month.

That 12 percent spike in the number of patients — many of whom aren’t actually facing true emergencies — is spurring the Louisville hospital to convert a waiting room into more exam rooms.

“We’re seeing patients who probably should be seen at our (immediate-care centers),” said Lewis Perkins, the hospital’s vice president of patient care and chief nursing officer. “And we’re seeing this across the system.”

That’s just the opposite of what many people expected under Obamacare, particularly because one of the goals of health reform was to reduce pressure on emergency rooms by expanding Medicaid and giving poor people better access to primary care.

Instead, many hospitals in Kentucky and across the nation are seeing a surge of those newly insured Medicaid patients walking into emergency rooms.

Nationally, nearly half of ER doctors responding to a recent poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians said they’ve seen more visits since Jan. 1, and nearly nine in 10 expect those visits to rise in the next three years. Mike Rust, president of the Kentucky Hospital Association, said members statewide describe the same trend.

Experts cite many reasons: A long-standing shortage of primary-care doctors leaves too few to handle all the newly insured patients. Some doctors won’t accept Medicaid. And poor people often can’t take time from work when most primary care offices are open, while ERs operate round-the-clock and by law must at least stabilize patients. […]

The same “experts” who didn’t see what we conservatives were predicting EVER SINCE THIS DEMONIC LAW THREATENED AMERICA TO BEGIN WITH are refusing the see the REAL cause: the law was based entirely on lies because the Democrats who shoved this evil monstrosity down our collectivist throats are demon-possessed liars.

Not one month ago, I wrote up my own experience with the Veterans Administration as to how this very arbitrary bureaucratic mindset is just taking over the entire system.  Within the span of one week, I suffered that arbitrariness of penalizing decent people because of the behavior of others TWICE.  First, I was contacted and ORDERED to take a urine test.  Why?  I wanted to know; I’d just taken one and that test had nothing to do with my healthcare.  Rather, it had been a drug test because I’m on oxycodone for the pain created by my service-connected medical condition.

Well, less than three months after the last test – which proved I was completely clean of anything but what I was supposed to be taking – I was being commanded to take it again.  And apparently under Obama I will have to be treated like a drug criminal at least four times a year from now on.

Why?  Because other veterans somewhere else are abusing their prescription drugs.  So the obvious thing to do – as obvious as it is to treat a 103-year-old Catholic nun in a walker like a young Middle Eastern terrorist male – is to treat EVERYONE like a criminal or an addict.

I have been receiving physical therapy for a major shoulder surgery.  I was given a month-and-a-half worth of appointments and I kept every single one of them.  In fact, I have NEVER missed an appointment with the VA.  But because somebody somewhere had missed appointments, the “system” decided to treat EVERYONE like a no-shower.

So I know firsthand exactly what these doctors are saying: it doesn’t matter if I do right or not; the system will punish me anyway.  And it will do so by protecting the very worst people (who of course vote Democrat, don’t they?) by redistributing the pain for the cost of their godawful behavior onto everyone else.  That’s what the welfare system is based on, baby: “Oh, you don’t have a job because you refuse to get off your fat, pimply ass and look for one and it’s easier to pump out ten kids and collect increased payments for each one?  Don’t worry, dearie, here’s the money somebody else earned by working his butt off.  Please don’t forget to vote for Messiah Obama unless you want mean Republicans to force you to produce something with your life besides flatulence!”

I’ve talked to several veterans who are as livid as I am.  And they are saying they’re just going to start buying the marijuana that the same damn DEMOnic bureauCRATS who are forcing them to take the piss tests for drugs are opening up for everybody else so they can be happier welfare recipients.  And why bother busting your ass to show up for appointments when you’re going to be treated like dirt whether you show up or not???

And so they are producing the very opposite thing to what they are stupidly claiming they are producing.

What Obama is producing is the same thing the ayatollahs Obama is appeasing and negotiating with are calling for: “Death to America!”

The fact of the matter is that ObamaCare was sold and marketed entirely on the basis of lies.  That is just a documented fact.

But the even sadder fact of the matter is that unless the Supreme Court finally steps in and does the right thing and overturns this fascist takeover of the American healthcare system, ObamaCare will destroy America because nothing will be able to prevent it from doing so.  It was crafted as a metastasizing cancer that will keep becoming larger and making the patient America sicker until that patient collapses and dies.

 

The Socialist ObamaCare Takeover Of Health Care Is An Unmitigated Disaster. Just Ask Doctors.

I write this the night before the Supreme Court releases its decision on ObamaCare, obviously not knowing how the SCOTUS will rule.

Will the SCOTUS overturn the entire law?  I think so, in the sense that the Democrats who rammed the disgraceful takeover of our health care system could have placed a severability clause in it, but didn’t.  One of the Justices (Scalia, in my memory) famously asked just how on earth they could be expected to divide this 2,700 page monstrosity up if they were to decide to overturn part of it and keep part of it.

On the other hand, The Supreme Court seems to have a penchant for deciding as little as possible and ruling as narrowly as possible – which guarantees that the same issues will come before them again and again and again.  If you are a fan of the SCOTUS, you might argue that this is because they don’t want to involve the Court in important issues which ought to be decided by the elected branches.  But if that’s true, why bother to even take up these cases with decisions that decide almost nothing?  On the other hand, if you are a SCOTUS skeptic, you might well conclude that the Supreme Court never issues bold decisions so it can have job security.

The court issues so many narrow decisions that merely force them to issue subsequent narrow decisions on basically the same damn cases ad nauseam.

An example of this was the Arizona SB 1070 Law.  By keeping the major provision and overturning the other three, you ended up with a joke of a system in which the states get to demand immigration papers and the suspects get to refuse to show them their immigration papers.  Antonin Scalia’s frustration over the near-useless ruling which guarantees that immigration will remain a mess would have been funny if the situation wasn’t such a travesty.  His harshest remark may have been:

The President has said that the new program is “the right thing to do” in light of Congress’s failure to pass the Administration’s proposed revision of the immigration laws. Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of federal immigration law that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.

So, while I am believing the Court will issue a bold decision and overturn ObamaCare simply because it will create a genuine disaster if it overturns the mandate (the funding mechanism) but leaves the rest of the law that forces trillions in spending intact – or even worse, leaving the mandate intact and choosing some other details to quibble over – I recognize that such a decision is how the SCOTUS normally does business.

A new survey that just came out that demonstrates just what a turd this ObamaCare law is worth broadcasting from every rooftop.  If ObamaCare gets thrown out as unconstitutional, then we need to keep doing everything we can to expose just how breathtakingly evil this demonic law truly was in the face of the Democrat Party’s “The Supreme Court is only a valid entity if it rules the way we fascist liberals say it should” mantra (see more of that here from elected Democrats).  And what the heck.  Here’s still more.  And we need to expose it even MORE if any part of this beast is allowed to limp out of the Supreme Court (and if the SCOTUS doesn’t overturn it, figure on the same people who demonized the Court saying, “The highest court in the land has now spoken …”).

So take a look at the following two surveys:

Thanks Obamacare: 83% of Doctors Surveyed Say They May Quit
Kate Hicks
Web Editor, Townhall.com 06/14/12

The Doctor Patient Medical Association has released a new survey of about 700 doctors, and the results are bleak. Scary bleak. Among other dismal figures, Doctors’ Attitudes on the Future of Medicine: What’s Wrong, Who’s to Blame, and What Will Fix It found that 83% of respondents are contemplating leaving the industry if Obamacare is fully implemented, owing to its disastrous projected consequences. Indeed, they openly blame the healthcare law for their industry’s woes:

KEY FINDINGS
 90% say the medical system is on the WRONG TRACK
 83% say they are thinking about QUITTING
 61% say the system challenges their ETHICS
 85% say the patient-physician relationship is in a TAILSPIN
 65% say GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT is most to blame for current problems
 72% say individual insurance mandate will NOT result in improved access care
 49% say they will STOP accepting Medicaid patients
 74% say they will STOP ACCEPTING Medicare patients, or leave Medicare completely
 52% say they would rather treat some Medicaid/Medicare patient for FREE
 57% give the AMA a FAILING GRADE representing them
 1 out of 3 doctors is HESITANT to voice their opinion
 2 out of 3 say they are JUST SQUEAKING BY OR IN THE RED financially
 95% say private practice is losing out to CORPORATE MEDICINE
 80% say DOCTORS/MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS are most likely to help solve things
 70% say REDUCING GOVERNMENT would be single best fix.
 
If this isn’t an airtight argument for the repeal of Obamacare, nothing is. When the people providing the actual healthcare are thinking of getting out of the game, the system is clearly broken. Here’s hoping the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare this month.

The other survey gives us more information on just how rancid physicians think ObamaCare is.

Some screenshots I took from the survey:

And:

So other than the fact that doctors will have less control over medical decisions while government bureaucrats will have far MORE control, and other than the fact that it’s going to escalate the process of driving doctors out of medicine when we ALREADY HAVE A DOCTOR SHORTAGE, ObamaCare is hunky dory.

Well, maybe not so hunky dory.  There’s a lot more crap wrong with this ObamaCare turd:

For Physicians, Obamacare a Net Negative
Posted on 15 June 2012 by jmorris
By Jeremy Morris, Associate Editor, US Daily Review.

Jackson & Coker, a division of Jackson Healthcare and leader in permanent and locum tenens physician staffing for over 30 years, endorsed the results of a new survey by its parent company that finds that a “D” is the mean grade physicians give the health law, despite its primary intention to reduce the cost of healthcare and provide coverage for the uninsured. Physicians who said they were very knowledgeable about the law were even more negative.

The survey was conducted online from May 25 to June 4, 2012. Invitations for the survey were emailed to physicians who had been placed by Jackson Healthcare staffing companies and those who had not. Respondents were self-selected, with 2,694 physicians completing the survey. (The error range for this survey at the 95-percent confidence level is +/- 1.9 percent.)

In addition, the survey shows 68 percent of American physicians disagree that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “Obamacare,” will have a positive impact on physician/patient relationship.

Only 12 percent of physicians said the law provides needed healthcare reform. A majority of physicians said the ACA would not improve healthcare’s quality, rising costs or patients’ control over their own health care. They also said it would worsen the amount of control physicians have over their practice decisions.

The only positive rating physicians gave the ACA was related to access. Fifty-four percent of respondents said the new law will increase patients’ access to care. The health law is estimated to drive 13 million new Medicaid enrollees beginning in 2014.

“Physician opinions are important since they are a primary driver of healthcare decisions and costs,” said Richard L. Jackson, chairman and CEO of Jackson Healthcare, a national healthcare staffing company. “Overall, they believe the law does not meet its intended objectives, negatively impacts the patient-physician relationship and hinders their ability to control the treatment of their patients.”

One important provision in the law set to take effect next year is the Independent Payment Advisory Board charged with finding savings in Medicare. Sixty-four percent of physicians said it would have a negative impact on patient care.

Among other key survey findings:

• 70 percent said ACA would not stem rising healthcare costs.
• 66 percent said ACA would give physicians less control over their practice decisions.
• 61 percent said ACA would not improve the quality of healthcare.
• 55 percent said Congress should scrap ACA and start over.
• 49 percent said ACA would give patients less control over their healthcare.
• 35 percent said it did nothing to reform healthcare.
• 31 percent said ACA didn’t go far enough and a single-payer system is needed.
• 22 percent said ACA went too far and impedes a physician’s ability to practice medicine.

“Improving the quality of patient care and managing rising healthcare costs are undoubtedly the two biggest issues facing physician practices today, and this survey certainly indicates the new health law is doing little to address these key challenges,” said Tony Stajduhar, president of the Permanent Recruitment Division, Jackson & Coker. “With a shortage of physicians already projected in the coming years, especially among permanent physicians, we need to actively engage this key group in discussions regarding healthcare reform that will bring about impactful changes in our current healthcare system―in turn, positively influencing recruitment and retention within this profession.”

To view the survey or learn more click here.

According to a statement, “Jackson & Coker believes that all hospitals, clinics, physician practices, and patients should have access to a physician whether for a day, a lifetime, or any of life’s changes in between. For over three decades, Jackson & Coker has been uniting physicians and hospitals to ensure that all patients’ needs are met by providing physicians for as little as a day and as long as a lifetime. The firm specializes in doctor opportunities for physicians at any stage of their professional career. Headquartered in metro Atlanta, the physician recruitment firm has earned a reputation for placing exceptionally qualified candidates in commercial and government practice opportunities. Recruiters work in two divisions of the company: Permanent Placement, which places providers in over 40 medical specialties in permanent placement jobs, and locum tenens, a staffing model that recruits medical providers (physicians and CRNAs) for temporary vacancies. Jackson & Coker’s in-house client credentialing specialists perform comprehensive credentialing services that adhere to the highest industry standards, with a dedicated individual for each specialty team.”

The “Obama Akbar!” liberals who most support ObamaCare frankly don’t care if it is evil and will kill people by medical neglect.  In fact, the worse it is, and the more people die because of ObamaCare, the better – because that would lead to the next step in liberal’s most cherished dreams of a state-controlled society.  Because the sad, pathetic, tragic fact of the matter is that the bigger and more intrusive government becomes and the more wildly said government fails, the more essential still bigger and still more intrusive government becomes.  If a small, limited government that conservatives yearn for has a crisis, most people aren’t gravely impacted.  If you have the sort of giant government bureaucracy that liberals dream of and it has a crisis, people will suffer by the hundreds of millions.  If we had a catastrophic collapse of the government – and believe me, one is coming SOON – you can rest assured that millions of frightened, hungry people would demand the government step in and help them – which is precisely what liberals want.  The system crashes, liberals seize power, and they never look back.  And it won’t even MATTER that they were the ones who created the collapse in the first place.  We’ve already seen this story before.

Update, 6/28/12: Well I was wrong – and very right.  SCOTUS issued one of its quibbling decisions in which it played around with the regime’s draconian Medicaid threats against the states while asserting that the mandate was a tax even though Obama and the Democrat Party swore up one side and down the other that it was NOT a tax.  But overall, as long as you play bait-and-switch and arbitrarily declare what Obama and Congress said was not a tax to be a tax, it’s “constitutional.”  All the Supreme Court had to do to not be “activist” in Democrat demagoguery was to rewrite the clear intent of the law to use the Commerce Clause rather than Congress’ taxing powers.  Which of course is pretty damned activist, isn’t it?

It is also the largest tax of the American middle class in the history of the Republic.

Obama is now a documented liar on his pledge to the middle class:

BARACK OBAMA: And I can make a firm pledge: under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase – not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

Obama promised it over and over:

But let me perfectly clear, because I know you’ll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people:  if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime.  I repeat: not one single dime.

And:

I will cut taxes – cut taxes – for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.

And in interviews with former Democrat spin doctors turned mainstream media “journalsits” Obama responded to questions:

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.

OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?

OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.

Here’s more of the exchange with Stephanopoulos in which we can now saw with complete factual certainty that Barack Obama lied to the American people:

STEPHANOPOULOS: “Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.

But Obama lied to you.  It IS a tax increase.  It is a supermassive tax increase, in fact.  And now the middle class is burdened with the largest tax increase in American history and it won’t be single dimes, but lots and lots of dollars, that Americans will find themselves paying.  Like everything this cynical, dishonest president does, it will be sneaky: it won’t be all that much in year one beginning AFTER the election in 2013, but it will be more in year two and quite a bit more in year three.

You just wait and see how much you are going to pay for this monstrosity as it increasingly starts to blow up as it gets implemented.

There is already a $17 TRILLION funding gap in this monstrosity.  And you aint seen nothin’ yet.  Not only the absolute number but even the rate of those without insurance has INCREASED since ObamaCare was passed.  And ObamaCare has raised the cost of medicine; the average family is paying over $2,000 more in health insurance premiums in a number of states since ObamaCare was passed.  And that was EXACTLY what was predicted as compared to what would have happened HAD OBAMACARE NOT EXISTED, according to the CBO.  But now we’re finding that health premiums are increasing by as much as 1,112 percent.  And the Supreme Court decision today will likely cause this escalating cost spike to shoot at an even higher trajectory into the stratosphere.

Let me put this into the context of the Star Wars fight of good versus totalitarian big government-gone insane evil: “Help me, Mitty Won Romnobi.  You’re my only hope.”

Please use your presidential lightsaber to slice this Death Panel to pieces before it’s too late.

As Democrats Rejoice Over Their Strategy Of Demonizing Republicans Over Medicare, Bill Clinton Takes GOP’s Side In A WARNING

Democrats have utterly demonized everything and anything Republicans have tried to do to show some actual leadership (note: which Obama REFUSES to do) and deal with the Medicare funding crisis before it implodes in just a few years.

A typical example of Democrat demagoguery is the attack ad that features a Paul Ryan-lookalike pushing an old lady in a wheelchair over a cliff.  It fails to mention that none of Ryan’s changes to Medicare would affect anyone over the age of 55, and that he is trying to save the current beneficiaries receiving Medicare from a disaster that will kill them all in only five years.

Only a few years ago experts were saying Medicare would go bankrupt by 2019.  That has now been changed; experts are now saying it will go bankrupt by 2017.  Which is only six years away.  And there’s plenty of time to find out that they were wrong again and no, it will go bankrupt even sooner than that.

If anyone is trying to save these people and save the Medicare system, it’s Paul Ryan and the Republicans.  It’s Democrats who want to let them all die while demonizing anyone who tries to prevent those deaths.

Democrats’ strategy is to do nothing – which will literally create the situation in which the system will crash and seniors WILL die – and attack Republicans for offering specific plans to bolster the Medicare system.

Bill Clinton Warns Democrats On Medicare: Doing Nothing Isn’t An Option
Doug Mataconis   ·   Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Former President Clinton doesn’t necessarily think his fellow Democrats are pursuing the right policy in their response to the Ryan Plan:

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — Bill Clinton had a word of warning on Wednesday for fellow Democrats: Don’t get too cocky about voters’ rejection of Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan.

In a special election for a vacant House seat on Tuesday, a Democrat candidate upset a Republican in a GOP-stronghold in upstate New York.

The race was widely seen as a proxy on Ryan’s controversial Republican proposal plan to convert Medicare into a voucher program.

Clinton, speaking at a fiscal summit sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said the race showed that voters don’t like the Republican plan.

But he also told Democrats not to shy away from tackling entitlement programs.

“You shouldn’t look at the New York race and think that nobody can do anything to slow Medicare costs,” Clinton said.

Of perhaps more interest is a behind the scenes exchange between Clinton and Paul Ryan after the former President spoke:

ABC News was behind the scenes with the Wisconsin Congressman and GOP  Budget Committee Chairman when he got some words of encouragement none  other than former President Bill Clinton.

“So anyway, I told them before you got here, I said I’m glad we won  this race in New York,” Clinton told Ryan, when the two met backstage at  a forum on the national debt held by the Pete Peterson Foundation. But  he added, “I hope Democrats don’t use this as an excuse to do nothing.”

Ryan told Clinton he fears that now nothing will get done in Washington.

“My guess is it’s going to sink into paralysis is what’s going to  happen. And you know the math. It’s just, I mean, we knew we were  putting ourselves out there. You gotta start this. You gotta get out  there. You gotta get this thing moving,” Ryan said.

Clinton told Ryan that if he ever wanted to talk about it, he should “give me a call.” Ryan said he would.

Interesting to say the least.

Outsidethebeltway posts a video of that exchange between Ryan and Clinton.

The Democrats have proposed nothing to fix anything.  Rather, they have recklessly spent.  And spent.  And spent.

And our nation is on the edge of a depression that will make the “Great” one look like a nice day by comparison.

Meanwhile, Obama and Democrats stripped $575 billion from Medicare in order to fund a new entitlement program under Medicaid.  And what his plan will do is scaring the bejeezus out of providers who might well simply either go bankrupt (before America itself goes bankrupt) or will simply get out of providing healthcare altogether.

I can’t predict whether the Democrats’ “Mediscare” campaign will work or not in 2012.  But if it does, America is finished.  The people who created this disaster in the first place and then attacked anyone who tried to fix that disaster will have won to ensure the nation’s collapse.  It will be as simple as that.

I also know that this happened before the 2010 smackdown of Democrats.  Remember?  In the 23rd district, the Democrat won a “Republican district” in New York.  And Democrats triumphed over what they thought the meaning of that victory was.  They turned out to be profoundly wrong.

One thing I do know: the Beast is coming.

ObamaCare Is Killing Private Practice Physicians

First ObamaCare had death panels.  Then massive public outrage forced Democrats to abandon the death panels.  Then Obama brought back his death panels by sneaking them in via backdoor regulation in secrecy.  Then the public exploded in anger again.  And now the death panels are gone again.  At least until the next time these dishonest rodents go behind our backs to impose vile policies the people have already loudly rejected.

Then there’s the case of all the waivers.  As of now, 222 businesses have been given waivers from ObamaCare provisions because otherwise they would have to dump their employee health coverage altogether.  Including quite a few unions that pushed for ObamaCare, by the way.

Doctors are still getting shoved into nasty little death panels, however.  Because ObamaCare is murdering them:

12.21.10 | Sandy C. Pipes | MedCitizen
Private practice doctors: Another Obamacare casualty?

While making the case for his health reform package, President Obama argued that his proposal would make life easier for small-business owners.

Unfortunately, Obamacare threatens to undermine a group of small-business owners that is perhaps more important than any other to his reform effort — doctors in private practice.

The number of privately owned medical practices has declined sharply in the past five years. In 2005, at least two-thirds of practices were in private hands. That figure has dropped to less than half today — and is expected to sink below 40 percent by next year.

Many doctors, specifically those who have just completed a resident specialty, are now choosing not to enter private practice in the first place. Instead, they’re heading to salaried positions at large hospitals. Last year, 49 percent of first-year specialists chose hospital employment.

Obamacare will only exacerbate these trends. Some of the law’s dictates will make it more expensive to operate small practices — even though the rules are supposed to reduce medical costs.

Take the new law’s health IT initiative, which pushes doctors to set up extensive electronic health records in hopes of better coordinating care among providers. More information, the law’s boosters argue, means less waste and lower costs.

But many private practices can’t afford to drop five or six figures on expensive health IT systems that may not even save them money.

Boosters of health IT acknowledge that large organizations are more likely to enjoy its benefits. But shoving patients into ever-larger medical groups may not actually bring down costs.

The reason, as representatives of the American Medical Association recently warned, is that big hospital networks have greater market power. They can use that power to keep prices high, and there’s little that insurers — and even less that consumers — can do about it.

Paying more for treatment doesn’t necessarily guarantee better access or quality. Without an ownership stake in their practices, salaried doctors have an incentive to work the hours for which they’re paid — and no more. Fewer hours for doctors means fewer appointments for patients.

History demonstrates that these incentives matter. In the 1990s, several large hospitals bought up practices and put doctors on flat salaries. As Dr. Bill Jessee, CEO of the Medical Group Management Association, observed, doctors suddenly “weren’t working as hard as they were before their practice was acquired.”

Proponents of Obamacare have conveniently ignored these lessons. President Obama’s top health care aide Nancy-Ann DeParle, for instance, wrote in the August issue of the Journal of Internal Medicine that the new law is “likely to lead to the vertical organization of providers and accelerate physician employment by hospitals.” These organizations are called Accountable Care Organizations, or ACOs.

Such vertical integration may prove costly. Already, hospitals lose money on a substantial chunk of the people they see. In New York, for example, hospitals take a loss on more than 70 percent of patients.

That’s mostly because of the stingy reimbursement rates paid by government health programs like Medicare and Medicaid. In 2008, the average Medicare reimbursement in New York represented a 4.7 percent underpayment. Medicaid’s reimbursements were even worse — as little as 64 percent of a hospital’s actual treatment cost. Those with private insurance are forced to pay more for care to make up the difference.

Hospitals’ Medicaid losses are compounded by the fact that the program’s beneficiaries use far more medical services than other patients. On average, the privately insured visit the doctor three and a half times a year. Medicaid patients make an average of seven visits.

Yet Obamacare will add 18 million new individuals to the program’s rolls by the end of the decade — and thus stretch our healthcare infrastructure even thinner.

Primary care physicians are already in short supply. The Center for Workforce Studies predicts that by 2020 there will be a shortage of 45,000 family doctors and 46,000 surgeons. Unfortunately, Obamacare provides no funding to significantly increase their numbers.

Emergency rooms will have to pick up the slack. The new law could result in as many as 41 million additional trips to the emergency room each year.

The health reform law was sold as a way to fill in the cracks in America’s fractured healthcare system. Instead, it has only made them wider.

This is just another example of how Marxist Democrats imposed their utter contempt for the free market system.  Doctors who don’t have their own practices have far less incentive to work hard when they receive the same salary whether they work hard or not.  And at the same time, the Medicaid patients go to the hospital twice as often as people who have insurance because it doesn’t COST them anything to do so.  Contempt like that is only possible for freeloaders who don’t have a stake in anything and don’t have to worry about their premiums going up like the people who pay into the system to keep the whole thing running.

This is why I keep saying that Democrats are either genuinely evil or totally stupid.  And either way they are moral idiots.

This is hardly the only article, and hardly the only issues that explain why ObamaCare is so vile.  I’ve got plenty of articles which detail plenty of reasons why ObamaCare is murder for the doctors whom our entire medical system depends upon:

Medical Pros Needed To Staff ObamaCare Getting Canned Because Of ObamaCare

Medical Doctor Points Out That Doctors Will Be Fined Or Jailed If They Put Patients First Under ObamaCare

ObamaCare Driving Essential Primary Care Physicans Out Of Medicine

Doctor Cassell: ‘If You Voted For Obama, Seek Urologic Care Elsewhere’

ObamaCare Factoid: Access To Health Care Doesn’t Mean Squat When Hospitals, Doctors And Pharmacists Bail

38 States Now Working To Preempt ObamaCare Disaster

Mayo Clinic Realizes ObamaCare A Total Disaster, Stops Accepting Medicare

Harvard Medical School Dean Flunks Democrat Health Bill

Why Won’t Obama Invite The Doctors Who Will Resign If His Health Agenda Passes?

Wall St. Journal Bursts The Obama Bubble: ObamaCare Is All About Rationing

And yes, that IS just for starters.

ObamaCare pledges to push something like 30 million more people into the health care system even as it forces the doctors who ARE the health care system to leave medicine.

How does that NOT sound like a total disaster in the making?

Medical Pros Needed To Staff ObamaCare Getting Canned Because Of ObamaCare

As if ObamaCare wasn’t terrible enough…

Side Effects: Obamacare Accelerates Hospital Job Losses
Posted November 15th, 2010 at 4:00pm

Repeatedly, reports have shown that Obamacare will increase job loss.  But what happens when those who are laid off are the workers meant to enable the health care law’s expanded access of care: namely, hospital employees?

According to one hospital, layoffs of workers have already begun as a result of the new law. Leaders of Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Indiana, said that although “the economy sparked this problem…the Obama Health Care Reform Act gave the hospital a one-two punch. While more people may soon get more health coverage, Obama’s plan cuts reimbursement dollars for hospitals at a time administrators say they could use them most.”

Obamacare includes $575 billion in cuts to Medicare to pay for a Medicaid expansion and a new entitlement program, which will provide generous subsidies for middle-class Americans to buy insurance. The cuts include slashes to hospitals’ reimbursement rates.

Of course, cutting reimbursement rates is bound to have an effect on hospital operations.  Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Actuary Richard Foster reports:

“[P]ayment update reductions will create a strong incentive for providers to maximize efficiency, [but] it is doubtful that many will be able to improve their own productivity to the degree achieved by the economy at large.”

“[P]roviders 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.”

Health providers dropping Medicare patients is the worst case scenario, especially in light of the flood of baby boomers set to retire and join Medicare.  For now, many hospitals are preparing for revenue cuts as best they can. For Memorial Hospital, this means reducing the work force. “We expect that reality to get worse moving forward,”the health facility said.

Obamacare is projected to insure 34 million more Americans by 2019. But by 2015, the nation will face a physician shortage of 63,000 doctors across all specialties, up from 39,600 before the law passed. The last thing the U.S. health care system needs is “reform” that encourages a reduction in its work force.

You Democrats ought to be ashamed of yourselves.  Just ashamed.

This godawful law is going to throw millions more people into the health system even as it forces tens of thousands of doctors to leave the system.  And what do you think is going to happen???

Your evil president and your evil party are going to be responsible for not just deaths, but outright murders by medical neglect.

Why Won’t Obama Invite The Doctors Who Will Resign If His Health Agenda Passes?

Michelle Malkin had the best title for the propaganda event that saw white-coated doctors milling around on the White House lawn: “Spin Doctors for Obamacare.”  She said:

Creators Syndicate – Lights, camera, agitprop! The curtains opened on yet another artfully staged performance of Obamacare Theater this week. One hundred and fifty doctors took their places on the plush lawn outside the West Wing — many acting like “Twilight” groupies with cameras instead of credible medical professionals. The president approved the scenery: “I am thrilled to have all of you here today, and you look very spiffy in your coats.”

White House wardrobe assistants guaranteed the “spiffy.” As the New York Post’s Charles Hurt reported, the physicians “were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image.”  President Obama’s aides hastily handed out costumes to those who came in suits or dresses before the doc-and-pony show began.

But while Halloween came early to the Potomac, these partisan single-payer activists in White House-supplied clothing aren’t fooling anyone.

Obama’s spin doctors belong to a group called Doctors for America (DFA), which reportedly supplied the white lab coats.  The White House event was organized in conjunction with DFA and Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign outfit.

OFA and DFA are behind a massive new Obamacare ad campaign, letter-writing campaign and doctor-recruitment campaign. The supposedly “grassroots” nonprofit DFA is a spin-off of Doctors for Obama, a 2008 campaign arm that aggressively pushed the Democrats’ government health care takeover. DFA claims to have thousands of members with a “variety of backgrounds.” But there’s little diversity in their views on socialized medicine (98 percent want a taxpayer-funded public insurance option) — or in their political contributions.

And she went on to document what a bunch of political hacks the “Doctors for Obama” and various “spin doctor” groups mentioned above had been for Obama and the Democrats.

Gateway Pundit revealed the typical Obama White House hypocrisy of this event:

What the media won’t tell you is that the doctors were former members of the “Doctors for Obama” organization.

150 doctors including supporters from Doctors for America, the former Doctors for Obama organization, assembled on the White House lawn today for a Astroturfed show with the president.

The operational word is “Astroturf.”  As angry as the Democrats have been about “Astroturfing,” they sure have done a lot of it.  We’ve had the children of high level Obama supporters planted to ask planted questions at Astroturf health care town halls to go with the busloads of union thugs being sent even across state lines to attend town halls.  We’ve had Astroturf former Obama delegates fraudulently pretending to be doctors at town hall events.  And now we have real, but still Astroturf doctors being brought in for Astroturf photo-ops – complete with Astroturf white coats.

The truly dishonest thing was when Barack Obama deceitfully misrepresented these doctors to claim that they somehow represented the medical mainstream.  Obama said:

“When you cut through all the noise and all the distractions that are out there, I think what’s most telling is that some of the people who are most supportive of reform are the very medical professionals who know the health-care system best,” the president said.

But when you actually realize what is happening, you find that this scripted – and even costumed – White House event is an all too typical example of the “noise” and “distractions” coming from the very guy who is complaining about the “noise and distractions.”

My question to Obama is, “WHAT ABOUT THESE FOLKS?”

45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

By TERRY JONES, INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 09/15/2009
Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors’ own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration’s claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.

The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in, and doctors’ positions on related topics — including the impact of an overhaul on senior care, medical school applications and drug development — will be covered later in this series.

Major findings included:

• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration’s claims that doctors are part of an “unprecedented coalition” supporting a medical overhaul.

It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a “majority of physicians want public and private insurance options,” and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday’s front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline “Doctors Go For Obama’s Reform.”

Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the “association representing the nation’s physicians” and what “many still regard as the country’s premier lobbying force” — is “lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama’s sweeping plan.”

The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA’s support of Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul.

• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll’s finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.

• More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered “no” when asked if they believed “the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better.”

This response is consistent with critics who complain that the administration and congressional Democrats have yet to explain how, even with the current number of physicians and nurses, they can cover more people and lower the cost at the same time.

The only way, the critics contend, is by rationing care — giving it to some and denying it to others. That cuts against another claim by plan supporters — that care would be better.

IBD/TIPP’s finding that many doctors could leave the business suggests that such rationing could be more severe than even critics believe.  Rationing is one of the drawbacks associated with government plans in countries such as Canada and the U.K. Stories about growing waiting lists for badly needed care, horror stories of care gone wrong, babies born on sidewalks, and even people dying as a result of care delayed or denied are rife.

In this country, the number of doctors is already lagging population growth.

From 2003 to 2006, the number of active physicians in the U.S. grew by just 0.8% a year, adding a total of 25,700 doctors.

Recent population growth has been 1% a year. Patients, in short, are already being added faster than physicians, creating a medical bottleneck.

The great concern is that, with increased mandates, lower pay and less freedom to practice, doctors could abandon medicine in droves, as the IBD/TIPP Poll suggests. Under the proposed medical overhaul, an additional 47 million people would have to be cared for — an 18% increase in patient loads, without an equivalent increase in doctors. The actual effect could be somewhat less because a significant share of the uninsured already get care.

Even so, the government vows to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health care spending to pay for reform, which would encourage a flight from the profession.

The U.S. today has just 2.4 physicians per 1,000 population — below the median of 3.1 for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the official club of wealthy nations.

Adding millions of patients to physicians’ caseloads would threaten to overwhelm the system. Medical gatekeepers would have to deny care to large numbers of people. That means care would have to be rationed.

“It’s like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only two buses,” Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told the Associated Press. [Link added].

Hope for a surge in new doctors may be misplaced. A recent study from the Association of American Medical Colleges found steadily declining enrollment in medical schools since 1980.

The study found that, just with current patient demand, the U.S. will have 159,000 fewer doctors than it needs by 2025. Unless corrected, that would make some sort of medical rationing or long waiting lists almost mandatory.

[Snip]

Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.

This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.

In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service.

“A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland” because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted.

British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.

Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country’s national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.

ObamaCare is all about rationing.

Doctors will begin retiring in droves because government-funded healthcare already has them operating at a loss.  On average, Medicare only pays 93% of the COST of providing care.  Doctors and hospitals subsidize Medicare patients at a loss by counting on private insurance-covered patients to allow them to operate at an overall profit.  If you expand government-covered patients, and reduce the role of private insurance, medical practice will simply become unprofitable.  Hence the mass retirements as physicians stop swimming against the tide of government red-tape and low-balling and just quit.

Why doesn’t Obama invite these doctors to the White House.  They can even give them white coats when they get there, to look more “doctorly” like they did with the pro-ObamaCare doctors.

If Obama had the best interests for the nation in his heart, he would want to hear from these doctors.  Instead, he’s doing everything in his power to shut such professionals out of the debate while he tries to ram his ideological and partisan agenda through.

ObamaCare will cost this country hundreds of billions – and over time trillions – of dollars at a time when we can least afford it, even as its imposition results in thousands of doctors choosing to retire at a time when we can least afford it.