A Portent Of Things To Come

The ObamaCare proposal that was recently passed by the United States Senate (with votes of yea from both Senators Webb and Warner here in Virginia) has as its cornerstone a savings plan that involves the reduction - to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars - in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals.  Fees for service are to be drastically slashed.

Sounds like a plan, right?

Only one problem.  Unless Obama plans to force doctors and hospitals to take in the elderly for treatment - at the point of a gun - those cuts will only make things worse for those among us who need care the most.  Because Medicare isn't paying out enough now to make it worth treating anyone:

Mayo Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients
By David Olmos, Bloomberg

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.” [link]

Now Obama has all the guns.  So he can force the clinic to take in Medicare patients.  Until the clinic folds because it went bankrupt.  Then another bailout will be in order.  Requiring more punitive taxes be raised to pay for it.  Instigating more bankruptcies.  And more bailouts.  And more ...

What a mess.

And Obama is about to make it far worse.

A suggestion: Don't be elderly in these United States.  Your days are numbered.