This is an excerpt from the first chapter in Lose, Weight, Feel Better and Save Trillions with Universal Health Care. (to be retitled Save Trillions with Universal health Care in the planned revision.) This is a short history of the making and shaping of Obamacare. All “reforms” proposed by politicians will be shaped by the demands of these “stakeholders. The 90’s Clinton effort to set up regional HMOs crumbled after insurance industry puppets, Harry and Louise, roused the voting masses. The 2005 Massachusetts plan; RomneyCare has been shedding eligible residents and reimbursed treatments to shave expenses. Californias stillborn Single Payer Plan was vetoed by Governator Schwarzenegger. Finally, that rough beast shambling in from the east, ObamaCare emerged, which kicked off the Tea Party Revolution of frightened and angry people (many on Medicare or the VA’s tab) demanding “keep gubmint out of my health care”. Peter Orszag was Clintons senior economic advisor, and was kept on as Bushs Congressional Budget Office head. His 2008 report on reforming medical finances pointed out the vast inefficiencies in the financial catastrophe of medical costs. He accepted Obamas offer to head Office of Management Budget with the agreement that health care reform was going to be done. There are few rooms where hes not the smartest guy in it, even though Obama filled his conference rooms with claimants to that crown. The White House insiders tell all book, Confidence Men by Ron Suskind, focuses on the Obama Teams flailing attempts to stimulate the economy without reining in Wall Street. Suskind also details how the best of technocratic health care reform intentions were wrecked on the boulders of medical industrial lobbyists pursuing short sighted, financial interests. Orszag was enamored with the studies on Medicare and Medicaid expenditures by Jack Wennberg, a professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Wide variations in the rates and costs of common medical procedures are performed around the country, even between neighboring counties, with no evidence that patients benefit from their higher use or price. Wennberg showed that the number of specialists in a geographic area determined the rate of procedures done by that specialty. Wennberg was treated for years as a dangerous heretic by Americas medical papacy, until his findings were acknowledged as indisputable. Easier to ignore than dispute. Orszag was obsessed with this evidence based cure for rising medical costs. The Dartmouth studies had shown $700 billion a year in potential cost savings if these practice variations proven to reduce costs were corrected. Lowering even a portion of these costs for Medicare/Medicaid would pay for expanded universal coverage. Orszag didnt get this included in the final package. The widening crevasses between the insurance industry, which was losing profits from spiraling costs, medical provider coalitions demanding higher rates and customers resistance to increasing premiums werent wedged wider using the threat of a public option. That was House Chair Nancy Pelosis original plan. Cave in eventually, but win some real savings up front with this tactic. Instead, health care reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle forged an agreement by medical industry representatives of physicians, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, medical technologists, unions and insurers in May of 2009. They agreed to lower projected costs by $2 trillion over ten years. This agreement was inked between the Obama team and this coalition. It sounded good then, although results will obviously vary. That’s how we ended up with the misnamed, The Affordable Care Act, a federal “reform” plan delivering 30-50 million new mandatory customers with subsidies attached to the medical maw. It has no mandate to rein in costs by limiting reimbursement to evidence based treatment. These are frequently the medical industrys cooked up studies proving this patented treatment is slightly better than that generic one. Surrendering even rigged evidence requirements for reimbursement, opens the door to Complementary and Alternative treatments, which can rarely afford the enormous expense required to meet scientific gold standards for medical approval. Even when they do produce proof, the “real” medical profession ignores their findings. The insurance conglomerates, pharmaceutical behemoths, and medical treatment multitudes are eager to board the Medical Model Express. (Orszag left the White House for a well-rewarded job with Citibank, joining the financial cabals where some of the smartest people in the world had conspired to blow up the economy with “risk free derivatives”.) Insurance companies are already raising their premiums 30% for individual policy owners and small businesses, their least powerful customers. Younger Americans are being charged 100% more for their insurance to recoup costs of insuring older and sicker Americans, who were often denied coverage before. Insurance costs for lower income customers will be subsidized by those with higher incomes paying tax surcharges, (already pissed about their taxes paying for the welfare of people they don’t know, more tea partiers will come to a furious boil.) ObamaCare, (a nickname more well known than ACA), is a reform” plan that still spends 25 times more on disease treatment than prevention. Even this measly amount in the Public Health and Prevention fund is already being raided to cover unexpected costs of implementing ACA. Most of what allopathic medicine calls prevention doesn’t actually prevent lifestyle or environmentally caused illness. They’ve gotten around a plain English definition by inventing secondary and tertiary prevention labels for diagnosing existing illness earlier and “managing” the diagnosed disease to prolong life.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 22:07:24 +0000