Letter: Doctors will take fewer Medicare claims

From: Joan Neururer
Waverly
As of March 1, Medicare reimbursements to doctors have decreased by 21 percent. Doctors weren’t even close to breaking even with the old reimbursements. This assures that there will be fewer and fewer doctors taking Medicare patients.
Doctors who do take Medicare patients will have to pass more losses on to non-Medicare patients. Insurance costs will go up and the hypocrites in government will want to further regulate the “evil” insurance companies, and possibly doctors.
Insurance companies have a low profit margin of just 2.2 percent and can hardly be, fairly, labeled as greedy. They are however, labeled as greedy by the Obama administration.
Meanwhile S-CHIP and Medicaid programs were expanded under Obama. For the first time in American history, government-run entities encompass more people than the private sector insurance. We are in big trouble. All three of these entities are under-funded and going broke.
To make matters worse, the geniuses on the left want universal health care. Every program the government is overseeing, whether Social Security, Medicare, S-CHIP, Medicaid, social services, and so on, is an administrative nightmare and very costly.
Altogether, government programs are spending us into oblivion. The national debt is $12.3 trillion. This translates into a debt for every man, woman, and child in America of $39,840 and that amount is continuing to mount daily, thanks to the spending of Mr. Obama.
This man has out-spent the combined totals of all the presidents before him and he has only been in office for a year. His “hope” has taken all our change “and” his “change” is taking all our hope.
Obama and the Democrats want a complete overhaul of health care. They had the numbers in the Senate and House to do whatever they wished. It is just lucky for sane people that they could not agree amongst themselves.
Our illustrious leader is, now, calling for bi-partisan support of Obamacare. He wants the “Party of No” to say yes, to bankrupt the nation. They must stand firm and continue to say no to this massive overhaul of the health care industry.
Candidate Obama promised transparency and accountability. He promised an end to back room politics. He promised C-Span coverage for important legislation. So the president finally, after a year in office, living up to his promise brought us a “health care summit.”
Earlier in his presidency he has a “beer summit.” Like the “beer summit” the “health care summit” was a charade and meaningless. At the health care summit, our angry and petulant president lecture for more than a third of the allotted time. The Democrats were given more than a third of the time to spew their talking points. We heard one story after another.
One can only wonder why these sad individuals weren’t already covered by the, much expanded S-CHIP or Medicaid programs.
The Republicans were given much less than a third of the time to make their points. They did, nonetheless, make their points in a clear and concise way. They were articulate and very knowledgeable.
Senator Tom Coburn, a doctor, and Senator Lamar Alexander led the charge. The Republicans brought out a multitude of fixes, all of which would lower health care costs and none that would cost the $1.6 trillion estimated for the current Senate version of Obamacare.
Among items mentioned were eliminating costly government mandates, allowing better non-taxed health care savings accounts, portable insurance, procedures for coverage of pre-existing conditions, and tort reform.
President Obama, the artful dodger, wants individual states to take on tort reform, not the national government. This seems strange coming from the man who wants to have the government’s hand in everything.
The really troubling issue with the summit is the fact that the president, even before the summit, was making plans to push the health care legislation through Congress no matter what transpired at the summit. This president doesn’t seem to realize that he is an elected official. Being elected doesn’t give him the right to do anything he wishes. He is our employee. He is not our dictator.
Remember the purpose of the health care debate is to lower health care costs, thus making health care more accessible to the people of the United States. The goal of the president, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed, et al seems to be spending money we don’t have. It is a power grab designed to get more people beholding to their party.
If the current health care legislation passes, the people on the left will have a strangle hold on the people of this great country. We will see campaign slogans that go something like this: “don’t vote for him, he will take away your health care.”
These are troubling times. We must become engaged in the health care debate. We cannot be complacent. We must call, e-mail, or write letters to our congressional representatives. If we are not careful, we will lose the best health care system in the world.