Blog and News

Secretary of HHS admits doubt that Obamacare "exchanges" will be operational by 2014 and likely at least half the states will not have one implemented. Even worse for taxpayers, the $1 Billion allocated to the program will not be insufficient to cover the costs and may require additional taxpayer support. Imagine that; another failed government program running over budget and not being operational on the scheduled date. 

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Dr. Ha Scherz's latest op-ed was featured on FoxNews.com today, and his perspective is frightening:

"If you have been watching the unraveling of our economy over the past several weeks, then what is coming very soon to health care should really get your attention. The financial world has reacted negatively and punished us for the misguided policies of President Obama and his economic team.

"Simply substitute Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, former White House budget direct Peter Orszag with CMS director Donald Berwick, and economic advisor Larry Summers with health care adviser Nancy Ann Deparle, and you get an idea of the types of individuals and the level of competence of those who are now at the helm of the health care system."  

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Docs4PatientCare's Dr. Hal Scherz has a new article published at Health Reform Report that discusses the HHS plan to spy on doctors. While the plan has been shelved, at least temporarily, Dr. Scherz makes the point that this kind of government action is sinister in additional to failing to fix any of the problems with the American healthcare system. 

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Stanley Kurtz writes on National Review Online:

"The 2012 election, and the existence of a free health-care market in this country, could well depend on a little-known agency called IPAB. [Short for Independent Payment Advisory Board, it is], a vastly powerful but too often overlooked component of the president’s health-care-reform law. IPAB has not yet come into existence, but when Obamacare goes into full effect, it will be an unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic entity with nearly limitless power over federal Medicare spending. IPAB will have the power to effectively ration health care through price controls — which may not even be the scariest thing about it. That distinction arguably falls to its unprecedented overriding of congressional sovereignty, in flagrant violation of the constitutional separation of powers."

In his April 13 speech, in response to Paul Ryan’s deficit-reduction plan, President Obama pushed to give IPAB more power and more authority over Medicare pricing as part of the President's own deficit-reduction plan. Kurtz characterized the President's speech as calling for "a substantial expansion of IPAB’s already unprecedented powers," and noted that "Obama can’t begin to match Ryan’s deficit-reduction program without massive, IPAB-imposed health-care controls that would amount to rationing."

In contrast, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans have offered an alternative about which Kurtz has said: "The advantage of the Ryan plan... is its reliance on patient choice. Having been taxed throughout their working lives to support a system that offers no choice, Medicare-dependent patients lose control of funds they might otherwise have used to purchase private health insurance. Ryan’s plan returns some of that money to Americans via a tax-supported health-care voucher. This allows consumers to choose the private insurance plan that most closely matches their priorities — devoting more or less resources to end-of-life care, for example."

Read the full article here...  

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From Sally Pipes...

"Democrats have recently seized on a novel way of reducing health care costs — threats.

"The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced that any insurance company that wants to increase premiums more than 10% will have to get approval from the government. Congress didn’t pass a law mandating this draconian policy — HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius simply decreed it."

While Vermont and Massachusetts are also headed towards a single payer system based on price controls, Canada, a country that has tried single payer, is moving away from that system.

According to Pipes, Dr. Claude Castonguay, the "father of Quebec Medicare," said in 2008 that “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

Read the full article here...  

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Kathleen Spitzer:  Wall Street Journal

Another case of abuse of power by HHS Secretary Sebelius:

“This is a threat to every health CEO in America. If Forest wants to continue to sell its drugs to Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration -- the biggest buyers of pharmaceuticals -- it will have to change management. Losing the federal government as a customer is potentially crippling to a drug company." 

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