Howard Dean, while still infatuated, pulls mask off Obamacare, revealing its nature.
The blood letting started almost immediately after the passage of Obamacare, when unions finally read the bill after promoting it, crying foul that they were going to lose their “hard fought” health benefits. But this article by Howard Dean, the former head of the Democrat Party, appearing in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, should be the coup de grâce for the essence of Obamacare.
Deans article is not a revelation, it is a confirmation of what conservatives and other critics have been saying all along about the main operative control mechanism of the act, the Independent Advisory Board (IPAB). In Dean’s words:
One major problem is the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB is essentially a health-care rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.
There does have to be control of costs in our health-care system. However, rate setting—the essential mechanism of the IPAB—has a 40-year track record of failure. What ends up happening in these schemes (which many states including my home state of Vermont have implemented with virtually no long-term effect on costs) is that patients and physicians get aggravated because bureaucrats in either the private or public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients. Most important, once again, these kinds of schemes do not control costs. The medical system simply becomes more bureaucratic.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has indicated that the IPAB, in its current form, won’t save a single dime before 2021. As everyone in Washington knows, but less frequently admits, CBO projections of any kind—past five years or so—are really just speculation. I believe the IPAB will never control costs based on the long record of previous attempts in many of the states, including my own state of Vermont.
His observations should also prompt the walk back of all the sneers and derision heaped on Sarah Palin and others for referring to the monstrosity’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) as a death panel. Dean’s word’s again about the IPAB mechanism: setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them. The criterion used to set rates will be warped utilitarianism. Grandma does not get the heart bypass . . . and when she dies sooner . . . well chalk it up as collateral cost savings. It’s a death panel.
Ken Watanabe actor from Vampire’s Assistant movie
Ken Wantanabe wannabe: Mark Ridolfi of the QC Times
But don’t hold your breath that the Vampires Assistants at the Cirque du Freak, aka the Quad City Times editorial board, will give Dean’s confirmation any significant play. They have editorialized that regardless of all the revelations and confirmations revealing Obamacare is a blood sucking disaster, that instead of stopping it, we should prop it up “to get on with the important job of providing affordable health care to all” by feeding it more tax payer’s blood. Their job as journalistic shills for Obamacare’s bloodsucking true nature . . . regarding the readership . . . you just sedate them. R Mall
