Democrats claim to have solved the problem of "overpayments" in the Medicare system in an attempt to lower the cost of Obamacare. Their plain is to just reduce the amount that the government pays everyone. Full story here.
Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said, “Nobody here is trying to throw seniors under the bus.”
Mr. Baucus, a principal author of the health care bill, noted that his mother was receiving home health care and said he would not do anything to hurt beneficiaries.
“We are reducing overpayments,” Mr. Baucus said. “We are rooting out fraud. We are getting the waste out. The savings go back in Medicare and extend the solvency of the trust fund.”
But Senator Mike Johanns, Republican of Nebraska, said, “The cuts will hurt real people.”
And Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said: “The Medicare home health benefit is under attack. The impact of these cuts will ultimately fall on seniors. Home health agencies will simply not be able to afford to serve seniors living in smaller communities off rural roads.”
I wonder if Max Baucus would vote to slash his staff budget to reduce "Congressional waste"? Just kidding.
These cuts will spill over to the non-government payments as well. Private insurance companies peg their reimbursement rates for each billing code based on Medicare payments for those codes. So if you cut Medicare rates to doctors and other health care providers then you also reduce a healthcare providers income from the private sector as well. And so it begins. Countdown to layoffs in the healthcare industry in 3...2...1.
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