Starving the System

If you are against Universal Healthcare/Single Payer Healthcare, your biggest enemy is Medicare. Medicare is an excellent single-payer system that covers a huge number of people with lots of serious medical conditions for a reasonable price and with low low overhead (2% versus 30%). So, if you are a Republican in the White House and in the Legislative Branch, what do you do?

You starve the program into submission. You don't come right out and say you are going to kill off Medicare, because no one will support that. But, you start trimming benefits here, making more paperwork there, donut-holes for you, and then you slowly undercut the whole program by making it unattractive to doctors. That is the secret plan if you will of the Republican Congress. Undercut medicare so that less doctors accept it, talk about what a lousy plan it is, and suggest privatization.

Physicians issue warning over Medicare pay cut
By Jeffrey Young

With the number of legislative days dwindling and a stiff Medicare pay cut on the horizon, interest groups representing physicians are again warning that lower rates will cause doctors to treat fewer beneficiaries.

Groups such as the American Medical Association (AMA) sound this alarm every time MedicareÂ’s complex and much maligned payment formula calls for a cut in their fees, as it has for several consecutive years. For 2007, doctors seeing Medicare patients will get paid 5.1 percent less than this year if Congress does not act.

The plan is already in action, your social security benefits have already been cut. How? Because for each 5% cut in payment, doctors must schedule more patients, which means that your time with the provider becomes limited, your care suffers, your health suffers, you suffer. Don't fall for it.

Healthcare for All is our only option for good health in this country, our only option for those who believe healthcare is a fundamental right and not aprivilegee given to the wealthy few.

Fight for Healthcare For All.