Socialists validate Right’s claims of Medicare cuts

The Unablogger

It’s not just tea party people and Republicans who are complaining about how Obamacare pays for itself on the backs of Medicare patients. While the main stream media may discount The Right’s claims because they are made by The Right, another source said the same thing today, a source with much more credibility with the main stream media: the World Socialist Web Site.

The site published an article by regular contributor Kate Randall, citing a report by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services stating that the House-passed universal health care bill (H.R. 3962) includes more than $570 billion in cuts to the Medicare program for the elderly. That’s about half the entire tab for the bill. The study found that these deep cuts to Medicare “would likely result in real reductions in care, resulting in some hospitals and nursing homes refusing Medicare patients altogether.”

Ms. Randall notes that the bill’s ” permanent annual productivity adjustments to price updates” for acute care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies would account for $282 billion of the alleged cost savings. The CMMS report states that this provision would cause Medicare payment rates to grow more slowly than health care providers’ costs of providing services to Medicare beneficiaries. This in turn would cause providers to reduce care provided under Medicare or pull out of Medicare altogether. Ms. Randall concluded that this so-called efficiency measure “would have the real effect of denying access to millions of seniors seeking health care.”

The Left and Right agree: Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health care bill should not become law.