Destroying American medicine------ObamaCare's Nasty Surprise for Seniors

ObamaCare's Nasty Surprise for Seniors | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - IBD:
"There are three things everyone who is on Medicare or who hopes to live long enough to qualify for Medicare should know.

• First, Medicare is no longer a financial nightmare in the federal government's future. For the last half century health care costs per capita have been growing at twice the rate of income, both here and abroad. This has policymakers everywhere wondering how we are going to pay the medical bills for future retirees. But no longer is that going to be a problem in the United States. At least not as long as we have ObamaCare.

...But ObamaCare is supposed to be about insuring the uninsured.
It's about health insurance exchanges and the expansion of Medicaid.
What has that got to so with the elderly and the disabled?
A lot, it turns out.
One of the most important sources of funds that are being used to pay for ObamaCare comes from cuts in future Medicare spending.
All this comes at a price, however.

• And this is the second fact you need to know. A letter issued by the Medicare Office of the Actuaries at the time ObamaCare became law warned that Medicare fees paid to doctors and hospitals will fall increasingly behind what other payers will be paying in future years – threatening access to care. That warning was repeated in the latest Medicare Trustees report, which warns that by 2040 half of all hospitals, 70% of all skilled nursing homes and 90% of home health care services will not be able to survive under Medicare's increasingly skimpy fees.

These comments by the actuaries, however, have been ignored by just about everyone.
In the latest Trustees' report they appear at the very end – on page 260.
If you are a senior, you have to be really, really interested in numbers, tables and actuarial arcana before you'll ever get to the page where you learn that you may not be able to see a doctor when you need one.

• Here is a third thing you need to know. Although Republicans have criticized the "Obama cuts in Medicare spending" as threatening access to care for the elderly, the GOP alternative essentially does exactly the same thing. The Paul Ryan budget – which was approved by almost all of the Republican members of the House – envisions a path for Medicare spending that is virtually identical to the Obama administration budget.

Essentially, the Republicans are planning to do what the Democrats plan to do: squeeze the providers. Only the methods differ..."