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.
Medicare needed reform, not "cost saving" cuts administered by unaccomplished politicians and amateur economists (you know who we are talking about !!). The Bloomberg article goes on to give us this rather startling assessment of Mayo's situation:
The Mayo organization had 3,700 staff physicians and scientists and treated 526,000 patients in 2008. It lost $840 million last year on Medicare, the government’s health program for the disabled and those 65 and older, Mayo spokeswoman Lynn Closway said.
Mayo’s hospital and four clinics in Arizona, including the Glendale facility, lost $120 million on Medicare patients last year, Yardley said. The program’s payments cover about 50 percent of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients at the Glendale clinic, he said.
“We firmly believe that Medicare needs to be reformed,” Yardley said in a Dec. 23 e-mail. “It has been true for many years that Medicare payments no longer reflect the increasing cost of providing services for patients.”
There is a reason why the Obama economic talking heads did not start with cost saving measures rather than health care "reform." It cannot be done to any significant degree in a political world. People will hate you and vote you out of office. Three years ago, Bush wanted to cut $82 billion out of Medicare. Didn't happen. In fact, not a single penny was cut. And now they propose $500 billion in cuts ??!!! ALL Obama cost analysis without exception rely on the proposed 500 billion figure to become a reality or health care becomes a financial black hole similar to AmTrac, the Post Office, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Our National Debt has already made painless change an impossible dream
What do each of these programs have in common other than they total $87 trillion in unfunded liabilities? Each was touted as being debt free and self sustaining after 5 years.
If we were to pay this liability off, over the coming 100 years, we would have to spend nearly $1 trillion per year in addition to all other spending. Even Obama "economists" admit that we will be adding a trillion dollars a year to our national/public debt over the next 10 years and beyond - over and above our unfunded liabilities obligation all other fixed or reoccurring costs.
Add to this fact $500 billion in interest annually, a figure that will double beginning three years from now. The total annual obligation of these three consideration ($1 of a trillion to offset unfunded liabilities, a 1 trillion annual debt against Obama's yearly budget, and 1/2 a trillion per year for interest payments on the current but increasing debt) and you have $2.50 trillion dollars.
Anyone know what our annual gross income is - nationally, via taxation? $2.2 trillion according to FoxBusinessNews. A responsible Congress would deal with this situation. Instead, our leaders shelve repair to the unfunded liabilities circumstance "freeing up" 1 trillion in expense obligations, leaving that for another day, another Congress, another generation.
Here is our situation in terms of the individual American citizen - 50% of whom do not pay income taxes: our average GNP (how much we earn) is approximately $24,000 per year, per person, while our debt obligation per person (whether working or not, whether adult or child) is around $143.000 . We are "upside down" and permanently so -- if we keep on doing what we have "always" been doing. We are stanch conservatives here at Midknight Review BUT, the only President in modern times to take advantage of the national economy in a positive way was Bill Clinton. While it is a myth that that he balanced the budget during his 2nd term, he certainly came closer to doing so than most but he did . not act alone. He had a Republican Congress. Obama and his nonsensical economic strategy could not be more the opposite of the Clinton/Republican Congress that "balanced" budgets and put spending in some sort of perspective. Say what you will about the GOP; include them in the blame game, but fiscal responsibility is more the history of the GOP than anything the Marxist economists of the Democrat Party could ever brag about. It is hoped that the GOP has learned its lesson and is willing to return to his roots, including fiscal responsibility.
Happy New Year, indeed !! Maybe we can say that with more meaning in January of 2011. -- editor
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