Medicare

Obamacare: Treating the symptoms, ignoring the disease

By: Max Borders 09/22/10 12:00 AM

Our healthcare system has significant problems. No one - right or left - doubts that. Coverage and care are frankly just too expensive. On this we can all agree. But why? Cost, after all, is a merely a symptom of what ails American healthcare. The DiseasesThere are five major healthcare pathologies in this country: Read More

Privatize Social Security? Yes please, say 58 percent of Americans.

By: David Freddoso 09/13/10 12:00 AM

National Journal’s Reid Wilson reports on the mixed results of a poll on the potential GOP platform for 2010: Read More

HHS Secretary – we will ‘reeducate’ you on ObamaCare

By: Bruce McQuain 08/31/10 12:00 AM

In an interview on Monday, the HHS Secretary Katherine Sebelious lamented, “Unfortunately, there still is a great deal of confusion about what is in [the reform law] and what isn’t.” She insisted that when the people learned what they would get from the new law, they’d more warmly embrace it. “We have a lot of reeducation to do”, she said. Read More

Obamacare’s stealth ambush of senior citizens

By: Staff report 08/17/10 12:00 AM

Even Obamacare’s biggest cheerleaders won’t be able to ignore Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster forever. Based on current law, Foster says, seniors who rely on Medicare will replace Medicaid recipients at the bottom of the health care ladder as early as 2019, five years after the individual mandate kicks in. That’s when the fees Medicare pays to providers will be slashed below Medicaid rates, which are already well below market prices. Read More

GOP spoiling for fight over Berwick appointment

By: Byron York 07/23/10 12:00 AM

On July 19, the White House sent to the Senate the nomination of Donald Berwick to be the top administrator of Medicare and Medicaid. The move seemed odd, given that President Obama had already nominated Berwick once, and then on July 7 used executive authority to bypass lawmakers and unilaterally appoint Berwick to the post while the Senate was in recess. Read More

Key Obamacare official gets recess appointment without even a hearing

By: David Freddoso 07/06/10 12:00 AM

The U.S. Senate will not even get a chance to question the man who will be responsible for cutting $500 billion from Medicare under Obamacare, program, as Chris mentioned earlier. Read More

Examiner Editorial: Want worse health care? Try British model

By: Fidel Cajulao 07/01/10 12:00 AM

All you need to know about Dr. Donald Berwick, President Barack Obama’s choice to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is summed up in the nominee’s own words. At the 60th-anniversary celebration of Britain’s socialized National Health System, Berwick praised it, and he clearly views it as superior to America’s private medical system. “You could have had the American plan. Britain, you chose well,” he said. Read More

You can lead a doctor to government insurance, but you can’t make him treat you

By: Mark Hemingway 06/20/10 12:00 AM

Despite the fact that Obamacare greatly expands Medicaid, we’ve known for while now that doctors are refusing to see patients when government dictates the price of the treatment. I discussed this problem in a column I wrote back in December: Read More

Uh, so why did the AMA back Obamacare?

By: Jeffrey H. Anderson 06/15/10 12:00 AM

In passing Obamacare, Democrats not only didn’t address a scheduled pay cut for doctors who provide Medicare services, but they also instituted new pay cuts for other Medicare providers (such as hospitals and nurses), which the Medicare chief actuary says threaten to reduce Medicare patients’ access to care. Simultaneously, the Democrats took money that could have been used to provide a “doc fix” and directed that it instead be spent on Obamacare. Now the Americ Read More

Examiner Editorial: President Pinocchio tries to sell Obamacare

By: Fidel Cajulao 06/13/10 12:00 AM

President Barack Obama’s nose grows longer every time he talks about Obamacare, especially when speaking to seniors. Obama told a group of seniors in suburban Maryland last week that “what you need to know is that the guaranteed Medicare benefits that you’ve earned will not change, regardless of whether you receive them through Medicare or Medicare Advantage.” Read More