THE WEEKLY PRESCRIPTION
Obamacare's secret plan: Destroy and 'rescue'
“I got the big picture.
The big picture is: This is a three-step shell game to bring about the death of private practice medicine in America…
Government
will declare a national crisis and push through emergency legislation
to nationalize health care. Hospitals will be taken over by the feds,
doctors and nurses and all necessary personnel will have no choice but
to be government employees, and at this point patients will be assigned
to the ‘Accountable Care Organizations’ without any choice in the
matter. At the stroke of a pen health insurance will cease to exist.”
Exclusive: Dr. Lee Hieb explains how health bill creates disaster – on purpose
Lee Hieb, M.D.
The
real name of Obamacare – a name known only to a few policy wonks and
politically correct medical students – Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act, or PPACA. With a name like that, who could object to it? Who
would be against “patient protection” or “affordable” when it comes to a
government-funded program such as Medicare? Really, who would want
“unaffordable,” though that’s generally what we get in government
spending programs?
But what does “Affordable Care” really mean?
Although
Obamacare is fluid, being rewritten hourly, as of this moment, the plan
is to create “accountable care organizations,” or ACOs.
These will be defined by geographic areas that contain a certain number
of patients. Currently, for example, a pilot ACO blankets a large area
of northwestern Iowa.
You
the patient, at first, won’t know that you “belong” to the ACO. But the
government has assigned you, if you are a Medicare recipient, to a
specific ACO. The ACOs will then be held responsible for quality – as
defined by government – and for cost containment.
I
recently attended a pie-in-the-sky, rah-rah session given by the CFO of
one of the new pilot ACOs. He went into great detail about the good
deal awaiting those hospital systems that play the game well. The
details, as he admitted, are somewhat lacking, as the rules continue to
be written.
But
I got the big picture. The big picture is: This is a three-step shell
game to bring about the death of private practice medicine in America.
Here is how it will work.
Step
one: America will be sliced up geographically into ACOs, which will
gather all sorts of patient-care data for the feds and will be paid a
fee for service at Medicare rates.
The ACOs will be lauded as the saviors of medicine and given bonuses
for quality and cost containment. Currently, they are being offered a
50-percent cash rebate for any savings they bring about. Patients can
choose to go anywhere for care, in or out of the ACO. Private
practitioners outside the system will be “allowed” to keep practicing,
they will not be forced to join the ACOs – that would be un-American –
but these small practices will be unable to survive the regulatory
burden of Obamacare. So, these doctors will retire early, or close up shop or simply go to work for the ACOs, where they will do better financially.
Step two: Once private practitioners are squeezed out of existence, there will be no competition.
The ACOs will be the only show in town and totally under the thumb of
the federal government. At this point, the bonus money will go away, and
the feds will squeeze down payment to doctors and hospitals. (The CFO
who spoke at our meeting may think the federal government is willing to
leave free money on the table for him to pick up, but that only is doled
out to favored political donors, not to producers. The bonus is
simply another bribe historically given to businesses by government in
order to make them vassals of the state … and businesses never seem to
learn.)
Small hospitals will have to consolidate under big ones or go out of business. At this point, to prepare for the final step, rumblings of problems in the ACOs will start.
Step three: As government reimbursements diminish and there is no private option, the system will fail to deliver adequate care.
Patients won’t be able to get appointments or timely surgery, doctors
will complain, hospital staffs will strike and in general the system
will implode. Government, always ready to leap into the breach (and reminiscent of the precedent of the Reichstag fire), will declare a national crisis and push through emergency legislation – that is already in the system – to
nationalize health care. Hospitals will be taken over by the feds,
doctors and nurses and all necessary personnel will have no choice but
to be government employees, and at this point patients will be assigned
to the ACOs without any choice in the matter. At the stroke of a pen
health insurance will cease to exist, and perhaps the companies
who sold insurance will be placed in charge of administrating these
ACOs. (This road is already being paved as big companies like Blue Cross
are given government contracts to administer Medicare.)
Think
this can’t happen? Even some of the ACO administrators admit they are
being set up to fail. But fail to what end? To the goal which has been
the goal all along: establish a national health service a la Canada or
England or Sweden. This is not a medical or societal evolution; this is
programmed incremental revolution, and we – like the Russians and French
and Cubans – will pay the price, because when free market medicine
goes, so goes freedom.
The
power that brings about this government takeover will not limit itself
to medicine. It will consume every facet of the social and economic life
of America.
Libertatem requiescant in pace.
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