MILESTONES

By Miles H. Barber
Ok America, sit up and read carefully. We are about to allow Congress to pull off the biggest scam since the Teapot Dome scandal nearly 100 years ago.
AARP has not surprisingly endorsed the proposed health care reform bill along with the AMA.
Have you wondered why?
AARP markets and endorses insurance plans, including health supplement policies for Medicare (government health plan). These are policies that pay the difference between what the government doesn’t pay and what providers charge.
As you know by now, Congress has consistently reduced payments to Medicare providers to the point they now receive about 48% of there actual fees.
Last year, non profit AARP earned $1.3 billion in royalties from insurance sales to seniors. They stand to make mega billions by marketing supplemental policies to all Americans who will be under covered through the new government health proposal.
If you read the highlights of the bill, you will note the proposal makes $400 billion in additional cuts from Medicare to help fund this boondoggle.
And you ask why would the American Medical Association endorse health care reform?
This is also is about money.
Since this government plan will start out with good intentions (like Medicare) they will soon run out of money. That means premiums (and taxes) will go up and/or benefits will be reduced.
Most likely, Congress will vote to do both as they have with Medicare.
When benefit payments are reduced, doctors and hospitals are reluctant to accept Medicare and they will eventually be reticent to accept Obama Care.
To fill this gap, AARP will offer supplemental plans for an additional premium so doctors and hospitals can be paid the difference through AARP’s supplemental insurance plans.
It is a very old and successful strategy.
Divide and conquer.
This is being done through the current House and Senate bills, that are so convoluted they will cause confusion with the average PhD.
The tactic here is to make health care regulations so miserable and punitive that eventually employers and employees alike will throw up their hands in surrender and simply say, “Let the government do it all.”
You may have observed that politicians create the laws and in turn the problems and then campaign against those same policies and problems?
Notice that we have a number of government health plans already in place that if those really worked, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Medicare is on the brink of bankruptcy. Medicaid, designed for the poor and uninsured is ruptured and bleeding. MediCal, our own state plan for the poor is so onerous it is marginally effective.
Have we learned anything from our political meddling?
To solve these major failures we are about to adopt an even more ominous monster.
Here is the real tragedy.
This final bill, if adopted by our Congress will be nearly impossible to reverse.
Regardless who is elected or reelected in 2010, they will be virtually powerless to unravel this legislation. Therefore once put into law, this healthcare behemoth becomes irreversible.
This is the political plan. The bill will not be perfect. It will cause confusion. It will divide America. And it will lead to a full government takeover of healthcare.
Of course we will survive and it will be at an incredibly high price for us and our children.
There should never be one politician ever reelected who votes for this charade.