That’s what White House Budget Director Peter Orszag had to say about the Congressional Budget Office’s latest statement that “the probability is high that no [health care] savings would be realized” by creating yet another federal board to oversee the federal government’s $33 trillion Medicare mess.
Here’s what Orszag said:
With regard to the long-term impact, CBO suggested that the proposal, with several specific tweaks that would strengthen its operations, could generate significant savings. (The potential modifications included items such as providing mandatory funding for the council, rather than having the council rely on the annual appropriations cycle, and requiring independent verification of the expected reductions in program spending rather than relying only on the Medicare actuaries for such verification, along with other suggestions, such as including an across-the-board reduction in payments as a fallback mechanism if the council did not produce proposals that generated adequate savings.)
That’s right: Orszag, President Barack Obama’s hand-picked budgetary whiz, is highlighting an admission by CBO that cutting payments to doctors accepting Medicare patients would result in lower government spending on health care.
Of course, the fact that the few remaining physicians who accept Medicare patients would drop these already-unprofitable clients as a result (something already happening in cities and states around the country as a result of the low reimbursement rates and regular governmental failure to pay on time) doesn’t matter here. After all, it’s just the numbers that matter.
You know — numbers. Like the ones the bureaucrats running the public option’s cost-effectiveness spreadsheets will be entirely relying on to determine whether or not you’ll be allowed to get that tonsillectomy, chemotherapy, or heart operation this year (or ever).**
Ah, sweet numbers. Because on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, we all look the same.
**: Please, spare me the asinine argument that “private insurers use their impersonal profit/loss sheets to deny care too!!1!” Playing the game of equivalence between Obamacare/”public” coverage and private insurance is a non-starter.
The entire rationale for a government-centric health overhaul — and for a “public option,” like Medicare and like the one that Obama, et al are trying to force on us — is that it provides better, more accessible, and more humane coverage than those eeeeevil private insurers.
When called on that fallacy, though, Obamacare supporters inexplicably want to slip from an argument of superiority to one of equivalence. I’ll thank them to leave the goal posts on this particular field buried right where they first put them, please.
Steve Maley
Moe Lane
Dan McLaughlin
Neil Stevens
That's one of the dirty little secrets about health care costs
drothgery Saturday, July 25th at 10:04PM EST (link)Most of the higher costs in the US aren’t due to running unnecessary tests or perscribing more expensive drugs or even spending more on marginal cases at the beginning and end of life. They’re because we pay doctors and support personnel more, and have more of them per patient (and we’re talking about actual nurses and such here, not administrators).
You know if we had TORT reform and Union reform
bobojake (Diary) Saturday, July 25th at 11:08PM EST (link)and enforce our immigration laws, we could reduce medical cost by 35% to 60%. Docters are notr overpaid. we have alot of government doles that have never worked in a real job, managed a business and probably didn’t pay taxes trying to exploit CAPITALISM that have paid the government doles way all their life.
Cut them off and get a job.
Tort Reform
CarolT (Diary) Sunday, July 26th at 12:06AM EST (link)If doctors were not paying $200,000 in malpractice insurance, it would drive cost down. Obama doesn’t want that because lawyers like John Edwards have made fortunes suing them and giving to dems.
I had a doctor, who I was friends with and in 2004 he told me if John Kerry won, he would be forced to either leave medicine of move to another state.
Mitt Romney would be POTUS if not for fact he signed that stupid MA healthcare law with Ted Kennedy and huge smile on his face while doing so. I live in MA, it makes me more work at work and I have to prove that I have healthcare so I do not get additional tax for not having insurance.
I don’t blame Romney, we have so few elected republicans here it is not funny and all the dems are corrupt. Were have had three dem speaker’s of house indicted in a row, each time, less republicans are in elected office.
I think dem majority here and always increasing is JFK, they remember him and think Kennedy’s are same. JFK would turn over if he saw how Ted turned to liberal lion. Older dems don’t think, think republicans are rich, white party. I have cousins in 60′s & 70′s that think this is true and there is nothing I can say or do, unless I prove in on non-republican television that I am right.
Republican television? Sorry, I am reporting something that one said to me when I told her she can’t be good Catholic and vote for Obama because he’s for partial birth abortion, late term abortion last August.
This is SO frustrating.....
marshmom (Diary) Sunday, July 26th at 8:17AM EST (link)Do these people even understand what they’re talking about?? Sometimes it sounds like they fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch along the way down.
An orthopedist already only receives $1800 for a full hip replacement from Medicare (and that’s from visit 1 to full recovery). What would they suggest paying if Obamacare is implemented? $100? $200?
Doctors don’t pay $200,000 and at LEAST 11 (8 for school, 3 for residency) years of their life for an education to make minimum wage when they graduate. Malpractice insurance is a HUGE factor in driving up costs for doctors. Many of the tests, procedures, etc. they perform are to reduce liability in case of future problems.
Reduce frivolous lawsuits and reduce medical costs. It’s NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!
Get a clue you ignorant Washington elitists!
Even shorter P. Orszag:
jccbin (Diary) Sunday, July 26th at 11:13AM EST (link)If we let the non-useful die, we’ll save even more money!
This Holocaust of a health care plan
gonzo55 (Diary) Sunday, July 26th at 12:19PM EST (link)is going to put every last American into the concentration camps of interminable waits, the gas chambers of inferior service, and the mass graves of fiscal irresponsibility.
I just wish it didn’t feel so inevitable. Given the strong majority of liberal democrats in the Congress and MSM, I’m honestly not sure this can be stopped. I’m willing to do my part, but other than complaining to anyone who will listen… I’m not sure writing my congressman is going to work on this one.
“Facts are stubborn things” — Ronald Wilson Reagan