The new Medicare incentive from the Obama administration: Cut Costs!

The New York Times tries to cover up the core truth about the New Medicare program that is arising from Obamacare. But there is only so much disinformation you can lay on the hard fact that Medicare providers will MAKE MORE MONEY if they restrict services and costs. Much more than if they expend money attempting to address complex and costly health issues:

For the first time in its history, Medicare will soon track spending on millions of individual beneficiaries, reward hospitals that hold down costs and penalize those whose patients prove most expensive.

…

This plan has drawn fire from hospitals, which say they have little control over services provided after a patient’s discharge — and, in many cases, do not even know about them. More generally, they are apprehensive about Medicare’s plans to reward and penalize hospitals based on untested measures of efficiency that include spending per beneficiary.

…

The new Medicare initiative, known as value-based purchasing, will redistribute money among more than 3,100 hospitals.

Medicare will begin computing performance scores in July, for monetary rewards and penalties that start in October 2012.

When compared to Paul Ryan’s efforts to expand Medicare services and let consumers pick the right mix of cost and value, this should be a political slam dunk. It is clear where the incentive lies here. Avoid spending a lot saving a terminal patient, or spending money on alternative treatments that may work for some individuals and not others, to make more money to cover costs. The calculus is so simple, even a liberal can do it.

More money = more patients helped. Therefore, patients with complex or costly conditions must be sacrificed in order to retain the resources to help the most people. Spend too much on a person, you lose money through penalties. Shuffle some people off their mortal coils early and get a bonus.

It is called triage, and it is a process of picking those who will die and those who will get assistance in trying to survive. Until now the process has been limited to doctors and families of the ill. Until now everyone had the hope someone might go above and beyond to lend a helping hand.

But now the government is taking over the process, using cold hard cash as the incentive. It is sick, it is pathetic and it is the logical extension of a political movement which casually disregards the sanctity of any and all human lives.

We will now throw out the elderly for a few extra bucks, and do so because the government has given the green light to do so. Not only have we given our independence away to the government, we sold our honor and humanity in the process.

Tags: Death Panels, Medicare, Obamacare

Sorry for the lack of posts but we went camping near over the weekend, with stints on Saturday and Monday in an amusement park and a trip to the beach on Sunday. All in all a great 3 day break with lots of challenges (gulley-washers, extreme heat, ant infestations) and great times.

Would love to hear how everyone else spent the weekend – hope the times were good for everyone.

One thing we did notice, in fact we could NOT help but notice, was reduced crowds everywhere. Here in the DC area we had 3 nice days, and this usually means the local amusement parks are packed. The one we went to (Busch Gardens, Williamsburg) was basically empty. We drove right up and parked, and we basically walked right onto their premier rides both days. It was quite stunning.

The beach did not seem overly crowded, and traffic back to the DC area on Monday was pretty much not existent.

The only thing we could figure was we were witnessing the harsh impacts of Obamanomics. I will not be surprised to see stories this week on the busted start to the summer. So while we had a good time and benefited from the lack of crowds, it was a bit disturbing.

Weird – this was a finished post at one point?? Here is another ‘finished’ version

While I and one of my siblings are engineers, much of the family hails from law – some even politics. So please don’t assume this little old rocket scientist is clueless on matters of law.

What we have in Wisconsin this week is a clear cut case of political, judicial activism in a recent ruling in WI:

A Dane County judge has struck down Gov. Scott Walker’s legislation repealing most collective bargaining for public employees.

In a 33-page decision issued Thursday, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi said she would freeze the legislation because GOP lawmakers on a committee broke the state’s open meetings law in passing it March 9.

…

Ozanne agreed that the court case is still far from settled.

“It’s not over yet. I’m positive of that,” Ozanne said. “The supremes are the supremes. They can do what they want.”

This judge has shown pathetic judgement and should be stripped of her robes. There are multiple reasons why her actions indicate a judge who has sunk to all time lows.

First off, the claim against the law is against the process – not the law itself. The law is not unconstitutional by any stretch of the imagination. Failure of process (if there was one) would not be enough to hold up implementing the law, unless the failed process produced a result the normal process would not have. But of course we all know the law was going to pass no matter what.

We know this because the Democrats ran from the state to try and stop the inevitable vote they were going to lose. We know this because the legislature stripped provisions requiring a large quorum so the GOP could pass the statute without Democrats present. We know this because, if the vote was held today, the Dems would have to run away again or lose the vote again.

So the process would not impact the result, and the judge should have recognized this if she really was qualified to be a judge.

Moreover, there is no indication the person bringing the claim ever attempted to avail themselves of that element of the process they claim did not happen? If the claimant was one of those who ran from Wisconsin, or never attempted to utilize the part of the process supposedly missing, then they have no standing. My guess is it will take little time to figure out the claim is bogus. Strike 2 against this pathetic excuse for a judge.

And finally, you can tell by the way she surrenders to the state supreme court’s highly experienced and respected jurists, that she knows her decision is a crock. Her effort at immoral judicial activism was born of malicious forethought. She does not deserve the high office she occupies.

Update: The venerable Ed Morrissey has some good observations on this fiasco

Lots of good comments on the previous post on the NY-26 elevtion, but I would suggest the path forward is still clear and immutable. The GOP lost NY-26, but not by that much. And we really can’t unravel candidate issues from the quirks of special elections in general – not to mention the faux Tea Party candidate. I should note that while the wave was building across the nation in 2009 and 2010, the GOP lost a special election in NY in a similar manner. So a local exception to a massive realignment is not new. But there are legitimate concerns..

It is clear the GOP has not won back the respect and confidence of the American voter – not yet. The two parties could once again vie for ‘least despicable’ every other cycle, as they have been for decades. For all we know, a new status quo may have been established with one more form of divided government that seems to be the preferred norm at times. But that does not mean the voters are not open to reasonable conservative options. They just cannot be fringe conservative options. The far right still has to be muted and the center respected – or else all those gains from 2010 can evaporate by 2012.

Voters want libertarian solutions to government waste and abuse – that is the immutable bottom line.. They want the deficit spending ended. They want reasonable and temporary safety net programs for all but the most challenged. Permanent support is only going to be for those truly in need of it. But it is HOW we get to these goals that is creating the hesitation. Not to mention the lack of trust, even when the path promoted is sound. Too many false promises by pols for too long for words alone to be taken on faith.

The people want an end to the DC-Knows-Best nonsense. Which means proposals from DC begin as just more nonsense. The people want lower taxes, want their lives back and the return of a good economy. They know these are not achievable (in reality) from the left. The left has lost (and is still losing) credibility. But the GOP has not earned their credibility back yet either. It is a gap that can be bridged, between what the people want and the GOP proposes.

And there is plenty of time for the 2012 election cycle. But be fore warned, there is a need to NOT kowtow to easy votes and stupid slogans. No back sliding. No running away. Paul Ryan has a good solution in general, it needs a combination of refinements and explanation.

More importantly, Every conservative not talking about reigning in DC is off message and not helping the cause. Obama’s birth certificate idiocy was an obvious cause of the rot which ate into GOP credibility. We also don’t need any social issues at this time, simply because politics is not considered a respected source of anything associated with morality. No one can preach to others about how to live a good life from the sewer of corruption and arrogance.

It is not the politicians job to tell us how to live our lives – left or right. It is the job of government to ensure the national defense, establish laws of criminal and economic nature to protect the individual’s rights, and to otherwise get out of the way of people and let them live their lives. Anyone trying to be superior is off track from the start. Runaway government is the prime problem.

If the GOP backs off from the Ryan Plan they lose. If they soldier forward and spend all their energy and time focused on shrinking government safely and without hurting those already in its clutches, they can win a big victory – over time. Over a long time.

This is not a one or two election cycle effort. There is no instant gratification here. Leave the juvenile promises of instant Nirvanan to the lunatics on the left. We need Churchill, not Obama. We need to understand our challenges and feel honor in taking them on. We need shared sacrifice, which is why the power has to be pulled from the bureaucracy FIRST, before the people are asked to sacrifice. What we need is humble dedication, not arrogant grand standing.

This is not complicated, but it is radically different from anything the DC elite have had to do for decades. They will not only be uncomfortable switching gears late in their careers, they will be awkward as well. And too many will resist – on all sides. They have grown up believing some government is required when in most cases none is, and it would be better if none was. Those cannot be salvaged, they must be dumped.

Don’t wilt, don’t lower our sites, and don’t get distracted on issues not important to the American voter in the center. You must win the center to make progress. Yes, it is slower than desired, but look at what winning the center did in 2010. Imagine what it could be like if the center was willing, en masse, to make measured steps for a decade or more in one direction – leaving the idea of government as the answer to all solutions in its wake. Imagine what slow and steady progress could lead to, and learn to work with the center instead of the lazy and useless backstabbing so common to so called patriots. Seasaws go nowhere, they just appear to have a lot of motion.

It is time to stop seasawing between the fringes and for someone to make a lasting alliance with the center.

Update: Interesting discussion on this over at Hot Air

NY-26 is having a special election today to fill a US House Seat. The race has been over examined to death, with the latest poll showing a measly +4% lead in a race which has to be a toss up at the moment. But it will also measure the temperature of the electorate for 2012. Bottom line: this is a R+6 district which probably should not be (and may not be) in play.

The race had one foul element, a democrat who portrayed himself as a Tea Party candidate. That is going to roil this race big time. He is not crashing in the polls after being exposed as a dirty-trick-charlatan. The question is will his lying pull enough votes from the GOP candidate to sneak the Democrat in, or will he taint the Democrat and ensure a GOP hold.

One thing is for sure, polling in this race is all guesstimating.

My take is this. The political tsunami of 2009 (VA and DE governorships) and 2010 (MA Senate and the enormous November drubbing) has not subsided yet. Obama is tacking still further left and his policies are losing more and more ground by the day. Support for Obamacare, his liberal spending spree and the resulting mountain of debt has tanked. He is around -20% in all of those areas.

Moreover, the news trust in the news media has gone down the tubes with their anointed candidate: Now all the left-wing news outlets are in the crapper when it comes to public confidence.

In a stunning rejection of network news and nightly news anchors, cable news, driven by the Fox News Channel and mouthy Bill O’Reilly, is now the top most trusted source—by a mile.

In a new poll from Boston’s Suffolk University, more than a quarter of the nation says Fox is tops when it comes to who they trust the most and O’Reilly is the most believable.

I ain’t buying the O’Reilly standard – all this means is we have a long way to go to educate the people on how DC malfunctions. But this rejection of main stream liberal media has to be bleeding out into a desire to be polled in my opinion. So I actually expect the GOP candidate to win.

But either way, the test seems to be Medicare changes to save the program. And if they GOP candidate does lose, and it is because the GOP had the spine to propose fixes, then the answer is obvious.

The GOP better not run from the Medicare issue. Fixing that with market based reforms and rejecting the disastrous path Obamacare is on for our seniors is a test of the Tea Party values. In my opinion, the message from here to 2012 is simple and blunt, since most of the resistance to Medicare changes are coming from those excluded from the changes – those over 55 years of age.

If the GOP is hurting due to the Medicare position, then it is time to remind those over 55 they are excluded, and to let those of us under 55 to decide Medicare’s Future without their intervention. And I am serious here. The Baby Boomers have left an gaping economic wound on this nation. They piled up mountains of debt and ridiculously hopeless promises. They gave our freedoms away to nameless and faceless bureaucrats, and now they have their snouts in the retirement troughs.

Well OK then – suckle away. But realize we later generations would prefer a different future. So please let us decide for ourselves.

It seems the most powerful man in the world is having a bit of a hissy fit today. President-Emperor Obama is once again faced with the fact that His Worshipfulness is not above the law. His Exaltedness’ illegal military actions against a country, which posed NO IMMEDIATE THREAT to America or Americans, have shown him to be less of a leader than Presidents Bush (both) and Reagan. At least these morally superior presidents understood war requires the blessing of the people – people whose blood, treasure and spiritual goodwill are consumed by the violence and destruction which is war. This fact of America is lost on His Supremeness:

President Obama wrote a letter to congressional leaders this afternoon suggesting that the role is now so “limited” he does not need to seek congressional approval.

…

“The US role is one of support,” the official said, “and the kinetic pieces of that are intermittent.”

“Kinetic” meaning killing people on the ground. All wars have intermittent battles. The man is acting illegally.

So why the resistance? Would Congress not authorize his ego-building (as opposed to nation-building) acts? I would guess there are enough rabid Qadaffi haters in Congress to possibly get this disaster authorized for a little longer.

But my guess is that His Superiorness is struggling to understand why, being the most powerful man in the world, his wishes are not immediately accepted and adored.

It would make sense. His petulance and irritation have been on the rise recently. His lashing out at Paul Ryan, his lashing out at Israel, his lashing out at the White House press pool. Even the attack on Bin Laden seems to have been rammed down his throat, a risk he may not have intended to take.

We have a long way to go until 2012. The President is losing all credibility. If he ratchets up his petulance in tandem with his failures and lost political capitol, he could easily remake Jimmy Carter into a reasonable looking President.

It seems Obama’s last two years in office are going to be a string of debacles, where his inner left-wing-nut-job comes to the surface and causes havoc. Pelosi and Reid cannot cover for him anymore.

A President can hold some views out of the mainstream, but he needs to work the changing of minds in private, not in the media. This camera-happy President has not figured that out. Again, his woeful inexperience is shining through. Face it, some of us part time bloggers and long time followers of Politics probably have more political skills than our teleprompting President has shown. Giving voice to words on a screen is probably one of those minor skills a good politician must have, but it cannot be their primary or only skill!

President Obama has just opened a major rift with our key ally in the Middle East – Israel. And he has done it with smashing panache and ruin. For example:

PM slams Obama call for ‘Palestine’ based on ’67 lines

… Netanyahu issued a quick, bitter response on Thursday night to Obama’s landmark Middle East speech, saying that the establishment of a Palestinian state could not come “at Israel’s expense.”

And also here:

For his part, Mr. Netanyahu has complained that Mr. Obama has pushed Israel too far — a point driven home during a furious phone call with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday morning, just hours before Mr. Obama’s speech, during which the prime minister reacted angrily to the president’s plan to endorse Israel’s pre-1967 borders for a future Palestinian state.

Obama uses childish and immature methods to try and brow beat his opponents. He tried this with the Supreme Court in a SOTU speech, and he did it with Paul Ryan in a speech on the budget. Basically he tries to bully people from the pulpit – apparently not aware that the nickname should never be taken literally. It is a useless method that simply creates massive resistance in his opposition, burns all bridges for future compromise and aligns more and more people against the head of the Democrat Party. The result of this is the price Israel will demand is going to go up, and the America people will be aligned more closely to the Israeli PM than the US President. Now that kind of screw up takes talent!

And that is the real devastation going on here. Israel does not need our permission to exist or make decisions. All that happened this week is they have realized this President feels the violence driven Palestinians are equal to the Democratic Israelis. He sees no risk in giving into the mass murderers. Yeah, dumb as a rock. But once you know someone is dumb as a rock you are no longer required to take them seriously.

And so our young and awkward President continues to blow out the last of his political capital, all the while exposing a core persona that no one can or will respect.

But he is taking the Democrats down with him. Just like war fatigue and spending sprees nailed a lot of the GOP, Obama’s failures and screw ups are tagging the entire Democrat Party with his foibles. What do people think happened in the massive tidal sweeps in 2010? Nobody felt their future was safe with Democrats in charge. If not for a few inexperienced candidates on the GOP Senate side, the House and Senate would have flipped in a massive repudiation. We know state houses experienced a massive wave.

Finally, after decades of unwavering support to Democrats, the Jewish lobby is beginning to understand the risk they have always played with the Democrats. Just like there are so called Democrat Catholics who never saw the threat from the Atheist, Catholic fearing left, Jewish Democrats are getting a wake up call.

At this rate Obama is going to have fumbled so much on so many fronts that there will almost be no supporters left for him – or his party.

Like many Americans, I am counting down the days until the next election so that we can finally turn the country around. 2010 was a huge step in the right direction, but it was never going to be enough. In 2008 our weariness with the war on terror made many of us susceptible to the siren song of “Hope and Change“. It was all a fine crafted lie, which has been exposed since then to really be cover for rabid, left wing policy disasters.

First the failed Stimulus Bill which did nothing but ratchet up our deficits and debt. Instead of lowering unemployment, it made the recession deeper and longer – years longer. We now have to pay off the bills run up by stupid and wasteful programs run amok.

Then came Obamacare which requires 100’s of special interest vouchers to avoid total disaster. All the while costs of health care continue to rise, as government run programs go bankrupt and lines for care start expanding. It is so bad premier health organizations wrote the President to tell him he screwed up and they aren’t risking their organizations or their patients.

The mideast is in turmoil, while an illegal 3rd war was started in Libya – this time without any congressional backing and based on an illegal UN sanction.

The DC pols are obsessed with kowtowing to their rabid base – especially the Democrats who fight every opportunity to get our collective house in order. Those Chicken Little cries of imminent doom screeched from Unions in Wisconsin to the Debt Ceiling debates in DC have proven to be all bark and not real. The sky is not falling as predicted.

And then we get this thrown in our faces:

A key senator has asked the Social Security Administration to investigate how people who live their lives role-playing as “adult babies” are able to get taxpayer-funded disability payments — after one of them was featured on a recent reality TV episode wearing diapers, feeding from a bottle and using an adult-sized crib he built.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican and the Senate’s top waste-watcher, asked the agency’s inspector general to look into 30-year-old Stanley Thornton Jr. and his roommate, Sandra Dias, who acts as his “mother,” saying it’s not clear why they are collecting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits instead of working.

“Given that Mr. Thornton is able to determine what is appropriate attire and actions in public, drive himself to complete errands, design and custom-make baby furniture to support a 350-pound adult and run an Internet support group, it is possible that he has been improperly collecting disability benefits for a period of time,” Mr. Coburn wrote in a letter Monday to Inspector General Patrick P. O’Carroll Jr.

The request comes at a time when members of Congress are struggling to cut budgets and weed out waste to try to bring down the staggering deficit, and comes just days after Social Security’s trustees released a grim assessment of the program’s long-term financial health.

Brings a whole new meaning to the term “Nanny State”. Why is money being diverted from my family so this idiot can wet his pants??? I for one will never watch the show Taboo – it promotes crippling dysfunctional behavior. I would prefer it be cancelled. But at least it has exposed a harsh truth – we could and should cut the government down to bare bones. No more programs to make lives a little better. Either you are completely disabled or you must fend for yourselves.

As I said, all this leaves me disgusted with politics and the current crop of so called leaders. We need to dump all the old guard who got us into this mess. We need to find hard working, truly successful citizens to come in and change the whole paradigm (which would bar community organizers from being pawned off as truly experienced and successful). We have let the fringes on left and right play god with government. Time to take the tool of our suffering away. Shrink government down to its bare and successful minimums. Award thrift and innovation, while demanding results. No more throwing money around hoping something might work. No more pretending bureaucrats are better at solving problems than the private sector. No more.

Sadly, now we wait for 2012 to make the final turn.

Update: Unbelievable! A millionaire receiving food assistance:

A Michigan man has continued to accept food aid from the state even though he won big in a state lottery game and said he told officials about it.

Leroy Fick won the $2 million jackpot in the “Make Me Rich!” contest in June. Despite receiving about $850,000 in winnings, the Auburn resident is still using his Michigan Bridge Card, an electronic version of food stamps.

Fick’s lawyer said his client hasn’t done anything illegal.

What a cretin. All the while our next generation of workers are losing precious career building time:

Now evidence is emerging that the damage wrought by the sour economy is more widespread than just a few careers led astray or postponed. Even for college graduates — the people who were most protected from the slings and arrows of recession — the outlook is rather bleak.

Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What’s more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree …

Yeah, all those shovel-ready jobs only required a shovel, not a degree. The lost years wasted over the Reid-Pelosi-Obama Stimulus debacle. Years wiped out and unable to be recaptured. 4 years of punishment for making a rash and emotional choice on election day 2008. Hopefully we have learned our lesson.

Update: Hot Air has more on this, and a lot of comments!

[Image care of Burnt Toast Blog – click image for source]

It is incredible to think Mitt Romney ever thought he had a chance at being nominated the GOP Presidential candidate. Especially after the debacle that is Obamacare was forced down this nation’s throat through bribes and hyper-partisan strong arm tactics. Romneycare is just a smaller version of Obamacare, with plenty of evidence now accumulated on how bad Obamacare will be for the nation’s needy, elderly and sick:

The Massachusetts “universal health-care system” — the model for ObamaCare — is in big trouble after just five years. …

The wait time for an appointment is now routinely over a month for primary-care doctors and specialists — including gastroenterologists, cardiologists, orthopedists and even obstetricians.

As expected.

It has only been 5 years, so the damage is just beginning. But clearly Massachusetts is on a path to be as fouled up as Canada’s and the UK’s National Health Systems are, where patients wait many months for needed surgery. And some die waiting in those death panel queues.

More than half of primary-care docs in Massachusetts find themselves unable to work with Medicaid or Commonwealth Care (state-subsidized insurance), which both pay providers poorly.

This is the liberal answer to out-of-control health costs: playing God on the cheap. Death panels establish what procedures will be covered and how much will be paid. And it is ALWAYS less than the cost of basic care. No superior care here. No cutting edge procedures. No ability for your doctor to try various options to see what helps you the best. If it ain’t on the list you can’t have it. Unless you are a rich liberal running the death panels of course.

It is not their call who lives or who dies. I would argue that those who worked their entire lives to succeed and fend for themselves deserve the best they can afford without any barriers from bureaucrats. For those who did not quit being responsible, those who did not fall into drugs or crime, or those who were too lazy to work through the public school opportunities (let alone community college), the choices should be theirs. Not some death panel of cost-driven bureaucrats.

Those who failed to meet their individual responsibilities in life earned their death panel care. They decided to live off the state’s largesse, not the rest of us.

I find it amazing someone who raised a family, had a successful career and compiled some wealth is seen as evil, while drug addicts who live on the street are held up as the primary goal for society’s focus. Sorry, but Darwin was right. Some will always fall by the wayside from on their own accord. Yes, we should always hold out a helping hand to get people out of their ruts. And victims are in a totally different category than self-made-disasters. But a rich, overweight smoker is not a drag on society. A heroin addict who haunts the sewers is.

Romneycare is a disaster still building steam. Wait to see how bad it is in 10 years. Romney himself is a politician, which means his words mean nothing and all we have are his actions to discern where he would lead. We don’t need Obamacare Part Duex. We need Obamacare abolished and our private health care system strengthened. I don’t trust Romney to be that champion anymore than I trust Pelosi or Obama.

He has no hope of winning any primary. Caucuses don’t look to good either.

And then we have Newt Gingrich’s immediate implosion as a candidate. Not only is Newt deluded on Global Warming, which in itself would devastate the global economy based on botched and crappy ‘science’. But Gingrich came out and proposed another variant of government take over of our health care, all the while taking shots at the one GOP leader out there leading – Paul Ryan.

It was a despicable act of political opportunism. And no one will forget his reenactment of Benedict Arnold. It seems Newt is not nearly as smart as some claim.

So we can thankfully kiss good-bye to the bizarre Newt and the misfitted Mitt. Trump self-dumped, while Huck did his “aw, shucks”. Seems like the GOP field is turning better by the day!

Now we can look at more serious contenders who surely will be coming out of the woodwork. yet unknown future greats.

Tags: Obamacare, Romneycare

The United Kingdom has a special place in world history. Among its most durable historic characteristics is its innovation, fighting spirit, indomitable will and drive for individual freedom. This small island nation explored the world and left its mark on many nations (UK, Canada, USA and Australia to name a few), many areas of science (e.g., Darwin and Evolution), modern music (the Beatles and Genesis come to my mind) and warfare (Harrier jets, the pneumatic launcher on aircraft carriers, etc).

But all good runs must come to an end, and apparently this run is going to end in bankruptcy and economic sclerosis. All this will be brought on because a bunch of lemmings have decided to follow the AGW pied-pipers over the cliff and into the abyss:
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Tags: Global Waring