Obamacare: Five Ways You're Going to Pay and Not Get Paid

The following has been excerpted from an op-ed by by Tony Cirillo, MD, Washington's Trillion Dollar Health Fix.
 

Increase in the federal income tax rate

Sure, be a team player. Pick up that extra uncovered shift on the schedule. But don’t pick up too many, because the max federal tax rate is going to go up…probably to 39%. Especially for you really hardworking stiffs making more than $250K per year, it’s time to start doing the math before you work too hard and end up giving most of that extra shift to Uncle Sam.

Decrease in the reduction for charitable contributions

Better think twice about buying those Thin Mints from the next door neighbor’s kid, or giving to the YMCA, United Way or any other charity. Why, because the amount of that contribution that you could deduct from your federal income taxes is going to go down, probably from 42 to 29 cents on the dollar. So much for give until it hurts, now it’s give until you bleed.

Bundling

“What the heck is bundling?” you ask. Bundling is going to be one of the key strategies to reduce federal expenditures on healthcare in the upcoming years. Here’s how this special trick is going to work. Instead of the government paying for each portion of a patient’s care (i.e. Hospital charge, radiologist charge, emergency physician charge during a single ED visit) the feds are going to come up with a single payment for an “episode of care”. They are then going to come up with a single payment (which you can bet is going to be less than the current sum of the parts), and then they are going to give it to one entity (probably the hospital). It will then be up to all of the participants to somehow divide the total payment. Gee, I wonder if the hospitals will just be nice and treat the ED docs as well as their radiologists, surgeons, cardiologists, hospitalists and every other specialty that will stake a claim for the money the hospital receives. This is where those years of schmoozing your hospital CEO and CFO will pay off. Oh, you haven’t been doing that? Too bad! Back of the line for you.

The AMA looks the other way 

After 30 years of letting the insurers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies skim all the profits in healthcare while physicians were getting, at best 0-1% updates from Medicare, I’m not convinced that the AMA is really who I want representing me in the big healthcare debate. And now we’re supposed to believe that because the insurers, hospitals, big pharma and the AMA sent some flowery, Kumbaya, “we’re all in this together” letter to the President, docs aren’t still going to get the short end of the stick (or dollar in this case)? Haven’t those same for-profit groups been shafting docs all along? Why should they play nice now?

Tort Reform?
Don’t hold your breath

Haven’t heard much talk about that in the healthcare reform debate, now have you? Probably not going to either. No, tort reform won’t be a big player in the healthcare debate, due in no small part to the historically friendly relationship between the powerful trial lawyer lobby and the democratic party. What we’ll get instead of a discussion of tort reform is a discussion about “more effective medicine.” That’s right, the federal government is going to do effectiveness research and tell us doctors what the “right” thing to do is, or at least what they will pay you for. But don’t worry, you probably won’t be immune from being sued even if you follow that standard.

Click here to read the entire article.

Catholics against Obamacare on Catholic Radio International

Leticia was recently interviewed on Catholic Radio International about her fears about Obamacare, and about how Jean began this website.
Listen here.

End of Life Kills Obamacare?

Democrats have spent the past two weeks trying to convince elderly American voters that only right-wing whackos could believe that Obamacare will lead to rationed healthcare or “death counseling” to convince those over 65 that they should help cut health care costs by, well, dying.

Section 1233 of H.R. 3200, the House bill that facilitates a government takeover of America’s health care system, has recently come under fire for including so-called “end of life” counseling in a “cost cutting” measure. The Senate has pulled the language from their latest version of the bill. (Stay tuned: there’s as many new versions every day as aircraft taking off from Reagan National Airport.)

Are these fears real? Perhaps the answer can be garnered from the past activities of the key drafters of the House Obamacare bills.

Read the rest here. Article

Jack Webb Schools Barack Obama on Healthcare

H/T The Anchoress

List: Bishops against ObamaCare

The American Papist is listing the American Bishops who have made strong statements about ObamaCare and what would – from a Catholic perspective – need to be considered in any debate about health care reform.

Here is the list so far:

1. Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, PA
2. & Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, NY
3. Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, CO
4. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, NY
5. Bishop Walker Nickless of Sioux City, IA
6. Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo, ND
7. Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, IA
8. Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, KS
9. & Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, MO
10. Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul-Minneapolis, MN
11. Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, VA
12. Bishop Robert Guglielmone of Charleston, SC
13. Bishop Richard Lennon of Cleveland, OH (PDF)
14. Bishop Peter Jugis of Charlotte, NC
15. & Bishop Michael Burbidge of Raleigh, NC
16. Bishop Jerome Listecki of La Crosse, WI (PDF)
17. Bishop Blase Cupich of Rapid City, SD (PDF)
18. Bishop Donald Trautman of Eire, PA (PDF)
19. Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, PA
20. Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, CT
21. Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford, IL
22. Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson, NJ (part II here)
23. Bishop Anthony Taylor of Little Rock, AR
24. Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, WI
25. Bishop Paul Coakley of Salina, KS
26. Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio, TX
27. & Bishop Oscar Cantu of San Antonio, TX
28. Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha, NE
29. Bishop Alex Sample of Marquette, MI
30. Bishop Victor Galeone of St. Augustine, FL

Obama Care: Gotta Love This Woman!

H/T: Steve Ray

Britain's "Death Panels" should be a warning to us

Once the government invades health care, it will soon be making life and death decisions for your family.
This aspect of HR 3200 was denied last Wednesday by my Congressman Joe Courtney(D-CT) who told a town hall meeting, "don't get hung up with this small piece of the legislation" (referring to the mandated annual discussion between doctors and elderly patients about end of life decisions). There was a roar of disapproval from the crowd, many quoting Sarah Palin's term "death panels". Is this hyperbole incited by right-wing fear mongers like Glenn Beck?
Far from it, read this chilling post on the National Catholic Register blog about how such death panels are far overreaching their authority in Britain and denying food and fluid to patients based on erroneous judgements that they are dying. Several doctors have written a letter to "The Daily Telegraph" expressing their concern that patients' lives are being ended.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.
“Forecasting death is an inexact science,” they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong. “As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”