‘GESTAPO’ TACTICS MEET SENIOR CITIZENS AT YELLOWSTONE
Wednesday, October 9th, 2013
– See more at: www.newburyportnews.com/local/x1442580373/Gestapo-tactics-meet-senior-citizens-at-Yellowstone#sthash.3C8EB2AV.dpuf
– See more at: www.newburyportnews.com/local/x1442580373/Gestapo-tactics-meet-senior-citizens-at-Yellowstone#sthash.3C8EB2AV.dpuf
Back when the mess that is Obamacare was working its way through the legislative sausage factory, warnings about “death panels” almost derailed the entire enterprise. There were two, somewhat related, areas of concern: (1) that Obamacare’s many cost/benefit bureaucratic boards would lead to explicit health care rationing; and (2) that doctors paid to “counsel” elderly and dying patients about end-of-life treatment would actually pressure them to refuse expensive treatments. Owing to the lack of popular trust, the end-of-life counseling provision was dropped to grease the way for Obamacare’s final passage.
Now, the proposal is back in both the House and Senate, with bipartisan support. The Care Planning Act of 2013 is the most far-reaching of the bills. Supported by the AARP and sponsored by Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), the bill ostensibly aims to compensate medical providers who accept Medicare and Medicaid for participating in end-of-life treatment discussions with patients. But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
No one is against doctors discussing end-of-life treatment options with patients. That’s part of good medical practice. But once the federal government sets the pay, it will make the rules. It won’t be enough for doctors to talk to their patients about tube feeding, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and the like. If they want to be reimbursed, doctors will have to structure the conversations in the way the government instructs.
Ever wonder why the health care bureaucracy is becoming so byzantine and sclerotic? This bill—meant to encourage conversations—is 46 pages long. It would create a Care Planning Advisory Board, an “expert” panel of 15 members, three appointed by the president and the remainder by the four partisan leaders of the House and Senate (three apiece). Imagine the patronage opportunities! (more…)
Marnie Baker, a pediatrician at California’s MemorialCare Health System, has an easy manner and ready smile. Now, though, her job is to be the bearer of a serious and, for some of her colleagues, unwelcome message.
She’s the voice of a program that digitally tracks their performance, informs them when they don’t measure up—and cajoles them to improve.
MemorialCare is part of a movement by hospitals around the U.S. to change how doctors practice by monitoring their progress toward goals, such as giving recommended mammograms. It isn’t always an easy sell. At one clinic earlier this year, physicians grilled Dr. Baker, who is director of performance improvement at a MemorialCare-affiliated physician group.
Cardiologist Venkat Warren said he worried that “some bean-counter will decide what performance is.” He wondered whether doctors would be pushed to avoid older and sicker patients who might drag down their numbers.
“If it isn’t cost-cutting, what is it?” Dr. Warren asked.
“It’s providing better value,” Dr. Baker responded.
Encounters like these are one result of the changes sweeping American health care. Technology is making it easier to monitor doctors’ work as patients’ details are compiled electronically instead of on paper charts. Software makers are selling new tools to crunch the data. Software called Crimson offered by the Advisory Board Co. ABCO -1.54%now includes information on more than a half-million doctors, up from fewer than 50,000 in 2009.
At the same time, more physicians are going to work for hospital systems, which are under pressure to hit quality goals and cut costs. Many are striking deals with insurers that pull them away from traditional “fee-for-service” reimbursement, which pays for medical procedures individually.
Insurers—which themselves increasingly track physician results—are moving toward providing a set payment for the overall care of a patient. This system means that doctors who provide costlier-than-average care could break the budget.
The federal health law is speeding these trends. Under the law, hospital payments and penalties from the federal Medicare program will be linked to their performance on quality gauges, particularly rehospitalizations, which are costly. The law also created a new Medicare initiative for “accountable care organizations,” providers that get extra rewards for efficiency and quality performance.
To succeed under the new health-care economics, hospital executives say, they must lean on doctors, who make nearly all the key decisions on what treatments, tests and drugs patients get. “The last frontier is the physicians,” says Thomas Heleotis, vice president of clinical effectiveness at Monmouth Medical Center, part of New Jersey’s seven-hospital Barnabas Health system. (more…)
Klein: Obamacare’s empress strikes again
In 2010, shortly after President Obama’s health care legislation was signed into law, I dubbed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the “Empress of Obamacare” for the vast new powers she inherited. Reading through the text of the law, I counted more than 2,500 references to the secretary of HHS, of which more than 700 referred to instances in which she “shall” do something and more than 200 cases in which she “may” take regulatory action.
Back then, it was scary enough that any individual would have so many arbitrary powers — from determining what type of insurance every American must purchase to deciding which insurers could sell policies on new government-run exchanges at what price. But in the intervening three years, it’s become even more alarming, because Sebelius has demonstrated a continued pattern of intimidation and abuse of her office.
In the midst of these stories, the Washington Post reported that Sebelius “has made multiple phone calls to health industry executives, community organizations and church groups and asked that they contribute whatever they can to nonprofit groups that are working to enroll uninsured Americans and increase awareness of the law.” (more…)
Published on The Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com)
Euthanasia for Obamacare
Jeffrey H. Anderson
October 8, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 04
At a rally in Ohio last week, Mitt Romney said, “Obama-care is really Exhibit No. 1 of the president’s political philosophy, and that is that government knows better than people how to run your lives.” The GOP nominee added, “I don’t believe in a bigger and bigger government. . . . I believe in free people pursuing their dreams. I believe in freedom.”
This is a welcome and winning pitch from Romney. It puts the focus on Obama’s centerpiece legislation, which he spearheaded and signed into law against the clear will of the American people. In so doing, it highlights Obama’s big-government liberalism. And it sets up the key contrasts in this race—decentralized decision-making versus centralized power, prosperity versus profligacy, liberty versus coercion.
James Madison argued in Federalist 51 that our Constitution provides a “double security” to “the rights of the people.” One half of that security is the separation of powers among the three branches of government. The other half is federalism, the separation of powers between the federal government and the states. Madison argued that both of these checks on the concentration of power were essential to securing our rights. (more…)
The 71 pages of emails show an AARP management taking orders from the White House, scripting the president’s talking points, working to keep its board “in line,” and pledging fealty to “the cause.” Seniors deserve to know all this, as AARP seeks to present itself as neutral in this presidential election.
Martin Kozlowski
The emails overall show an AARP leadership—Policy Chief John Rother, Health Policy Director Nora Super, Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond, Senior Vice President David Sloane—that from the start worked to pass ObamaCare, before crucial details pertaining to seniors had been addressed. This crew was in constant contact with Mr. Obama’s top aides, in particular Nancy-Ann DeParle and Jim Messina. (more…)
On Friday House Republicans released more documents that expose the collusion between the health-care industry and the White House that produced ObamaCare, and what a story of crony capitalism it is. If the trove of emails proves anything, it’s that the Tea Party isn’t angry enough.
Over the last year, the Energy and Commerce Committee has taken Nancy Pelosi’s advice to see what’s in the Affordable Care Act and how it passed. The White House refused to cooperate beyond printing out old press releases, but a dozen trade groups turned over thousands of emails and other files. A particular focus is the drug lobby, President Obama’s most loyal corporate ally in 2009 and 2010.
The business refrain in those days was that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. But it turns out Big Pharma was also serving as head chef, maître d’hotel and dishwasher. Though some parts of the story have been reported before, the emails make clear that ObamaCare might never have passed without the drug companies. Thank you, Pfizer.
The joint venture was forged in secret in spring 2009 amid an uneasy mix of menace and opportunism. The drug makers worried that health-care reform would revert to the liberal default of price controls and drug re-importation that Mr. Obama campaigned on, but they also understood that a new entitlement could be a windfall as taxpayers bought more of their products. The White House wanted industry financial help and knew that determined business opposition could tank the bill.
Initially, the Obamateers and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus asked for $100 billion, 90% of it from mandatory “rebates” through the Medicare prescription drug benefit like those that are imposed in Medicaid. The drug makers wheedled them down to $80 billion by offsetting cost-sharing for seniors on Medicare, in an explicit quid pro quo for protection against such rebates and re-importation. As Pfizer’s then-CEO Jeff Kindler put it, “our key deal points . . . are, to some extent, as important as the total dollars.” Mr. Kindler played a more influential role than we understood before, as the emails show.
Thus began a close if sometimes dysfunctional relationship with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, as led by Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Democrat turned Republican turned lobbyist. As a White House staffer put it in May 2009, “Rahm’s calling Nancy-Ann and knows Billy is going to talk to Nancy-Ann tonight. Rahm will make it clear that PhRMA needs a direct line of communication, separate and apart from any coalition.” Nancy-Ann is Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House health reform director, and Rahm is, of course, Rahm.
Editorial board member Joe Rago on emails that expose Big Pharma’s collusion with the White House to pass ObamaCare. Photo: Getty Images. (more…)
By Terrence Scanlon
Terrence Scanlon is president of the Capital Research Center.
May 28, 2012
Formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, the nation’s largest seniors group hasn’t cared about its elderly members’ well-being for eons. It’s been too busy building a financial empire.
With $1.6 billion in assets and $1.2 billion in revenue in 2010, AARP is a moneymaking powerhouse. The bulk of its money comes not from membership dues but from product endorsements and business agreements with insurance companies.
These mountains of money and the generous salaries that AARP lavishes on its corporate executives recently drew the attention of members of Congress who have asked the Internal Revenue Service to review AARP’s tax-exempt status. Their findings appeared in an eye-opening investigative report, “Behind the Veil: The AARP America Doesn’t Know,” that was issued by Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Much of the self-described “nonprofit” group’s revenue comes from the sale of supplemental Medicare insurance provided by UnitedHealthcare, which pays a royalty fee to AARP to use its name for marketing purposes. This licensing earned AARP $284 million in 2007, a figure that ballooned to $427 million in 2009 and $670 million in 2010.
As it amasses huge profits, AARP also has become the 800-pound gorilla of special-interest advocacy groups. (more…)
So this is Gina Raimondo? The state treasurer who single-handedly overhauled Rhode Island’s pension system and has unions screaming bloody murder? I had imagined her a bit, well, bigger. If not larger than life like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, then at least life-size. Ms. Raimondo couldn’t be much taller than five feet, which may have caused some to underestimate her. That isn’t the only thing that may have surprised people.
The former venture capitalist is a Democrat, which means that she believes in government as a force for good. But “a government that doesn’t work is in no one’s interest,” she says. “Budgets that don’t balance, public programs that aren’t funded, pension funds that are running out of money, schools that aren’t funded—How does that help anyone? I don’t really care if you’re a Republican or Democrat or you want to fight about the size of government. How about a government that just works? Put your tax dollar in and get a return out the other end.”
Yes, that would be nice. Unfortunately, public pensions all over the country are gobbling up more and more taxpayer money and producing nothing in return but huge deficits. It’s not even certain whether employees in their 20s and 30s will retire with a pension, since many state and municipal pension systems are projected to run dry in the next two to three decades.
That included Rhode Island’s system until last year, when Ms. Raimondo drove perhaps the boldest pension reform of the last decade through the state’s Democratic-controlled General Assembly. The new law shifts all workers from defined-benefit pensions into hybrid plans, which include a modest annuity and a defined-contribution component. It also increases the retirement age to 67 from 62 for all workers and suspends cost-of-living adjustments for retirees until the pension system, which is only about 50% funded, reaches a more healthy state. (more…)
Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer writing March 15 at Reason.com:
For centuries, my predecessors and I have been inculcated with what has come to be called the “Hippocratic Ethic.” This tradition holds that I am ethically required to use the best of my knowledge to recommend to my patient what I consider to be in my patient’s best interests—without regard to the interests of the third-party payer, or the government, or anyone else.
But gradually the medical profession has been forced to give up this approach for what I like to call a “veterinary ethic,” one that places the interests of the payer (or owner) ahead of the patient. For example, when a pet owner is told by a veterinarian that the pet has a very serious medical condition requiring extremely costly surgery or other therapy, the veterinarian presents the pet’s owner with one or more options—from attempt at cure, to palliation, to euthanasia—with the associated costs, and then follows the wishes of the owner.
Several factors in combination are bringing this ethical approach to my profession.
Since the mid-1980s, Medicare has imposed price controls on health care providers. Over the years, in order to accommodate increasing Medicare utilization, physician payments have steadily dropped.
Meanwhile, the regulatory burden on physicians has increased. In the last few years, CMS required all providers to adopt electronic health records or face economic sanctions from Medicare. It is the ultimate goal that every health care provider, including pharmacies, will have electronic databases that will be accessible to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
In 2009, as part of the so-called stimulus bill, the Federal Commission for the Coordination of Comparative Effectiveness Research (FCCCER) was created. Its mission is to collect the data culled from all electronic health records and make recommendations regarding the comparative effectiveness of drugs, procedures, and therapies. In rendering advice, the FCCCER will essentially answer the following question: What is the most cost-effective way of allocating a fixed amount of resources among a population of roughly 310 million people? . . .
These protocols govern the therapeutic decisions made by the health care practitioner—right down to the pre-operative antibiotics a surgeon may order. Despite the fact that several recent peer-reviewed studies concluded that the protocols have had no positive effect—in fact, one study showed post-op skin infections increased since the protocols were instituted—CMS imposes financial penalties on hospitals that fail to get protocol compliance from their medical staff.
Medical students and residents are now being trained to follow federally-derived protocols and guidelines as a normal part of medical practice. As a result, this new generation of doctors will be less inclined to challenge the recommendations of federal task forces and agencies. Some academics also worry that “teaching to the protocol” might discourage independent thinking and the use of intuitive knowledge, two traits essential to the practice of good medicine.’