Newsweek's Evan Thomas on 'Inside Washington': ObamaCare, 'As It's Been Practiced, It's Failed'
Okay, who slipped truth serum into Evan Thomas's coffee?
On Friday, Newsweek's "Editor at Large" (according to his bio here) appeared on "Inside Washington" (link to entire show is here; transcript not yet available). After being cued up with a softball from host Gordon Peterson about how supposedly great Friday's news about the drop in the national unemployment rate was (uh, not exactly, Gordon), Thomas segued into a somewhat surprising comment about how ObamaCare's implementation is going as it meets the real world. In a word (Thomas's), it's a disaster (HT Daily Caller via Instapundit):
GORDON PETERSON: A minute ago we heard a Congressman talking about repealing the, quote, "job-killing affordable health care law act." "Job-killing" is now attached to everything the Democrats love, apparently. But on Friday we learned that the unemployment rate had dropped to 9.4%. Uh, that's good news for Democrats, not so perhaps such good news for people who talk about job-killing legislation.
EVAN THOMAS: Because of Congress. I mean, y'know, the unemployment will go down a little bit, but the game in Washington, it will still be this unreal game. On health care though, I gotta say that's one place where the Republicans are right. Uh, the health care bill is, is a disaster, we're sort of slowly learning that. It's not working. It's interesting, that through implementing it, and it's not working out at all as people anticipated. There's also wildly wrong projections. People aren't -- As it's been practiced, it's failed.
In discussing the "good news" about the unemployment rate drop, Peterson "somehow" forgot that about half of the reason why it occurred is that over a quarter-million of the unemployed stopped looking for work. An Investors Business Daily editorial noted: "Today, the labor force is actually smaller than it was when the recession began. President Obama's economic program is driving people out of the work force faster than it's bringing them in. Some progress."
Apparently assuming that no one in the panel's viewing audience could possibly be interested in learning some of the details of the ObamaCare failure Thomas cited, Peterson quickly changed the subject to how new Majority Leader John Boehner is supposedly breaking a fall campaign promise by not allowing debate or amendments on an anticipated up-or-down vote to repeal ObamaCare. This was a real hot button for fellow panelist Mark Shields, who could barely contain himself before weighing in with his faux "gotcha."
Geez, one of the core promises in the GOP's Pledge to America is to repeal ObamaCare in its entirety (from Page 6 of the Plan; large PDF):
Of course, Americans remember that President Obama argued his government takeover of health care was the single most important thing we could do to address our growing debt crisis. This notion has since been thoroughly discredited: we now know the new health care law will mean more financial pain for seniors, families, and the federal government. We offer a plan to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care with common sense solutions focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs.
Hello, Gordon and Mark? The Pledge promises full repeal, not a piecemeal mush. Allowing any kind of water-down would be the real promise-breaker.
As to Thomas's comments on ObamaCare, don't wait by your computer for follow-up reports from anyone, including Thomas himself, identifying the specific ways in which ObamaCare has failed thus far.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
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Comments
How the H can you tack amendments onto a "repeal" vote???
Submitted by motherbelt on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 9:40am.
Seems to me there are are two ways to vote: repeal it, or not.
They are the ones who want to relitigate (-Chuck Tood, President Obama) it.
To me, the most agregiously
Submitted by Barack_must_go..... on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 9:58am.
To me, the most agregiously hypocritical, possibly criminal ( though never spoken of ) aspect of Obama's radical power grab for complete control over the American people is the fact ( if the democrat claims are true ) that 30 to 40 thousand Americans needlessly die each year simply because they're denied access to health insurance.
This was Obama's key arguement, used to discredit opponents of ObamaCare, yet if his numbers are correct, by waiting 4 years ( solely for the purposes of political expediency, CBO scoring ) to implement the ' hallmark ' of this law, he is personally responsible for the deaths of approximately 140,000 Americans.
Why aren't the left wing bomb throwers, or anyone for that matter, screaming from the rooftops over this most disturbing reality?
Maybe because it's not the truth.......or nobody cares? Inquiring minds ( mine anyway ) would like to know.....
Barack_Must_Go.....
How about the statistic that the "uncovered" have increased?
Submitted by TheHistorian on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 1:33pm.
The numbers in the following estimate? 30-4- million, and that with the illegal population going home due to the bad economy. Think an INCREASE in the uninsured may be one of the issues? http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCoQFjAC&url=http%3A...
Of course, the solution that the site recommends, (progressive income taxes to pay for health care), is a pipe dream. You CANNOT fund 16% of the economy IN ADDITION TO THE PROGRESSIVE PIPE DREAMS IN PLACE TODAY by a "soak the rich" approach. There are not that many rich in the world, much less the US.
Dennis Prager
ObamaCare, 'As It's Been Practiced, It's Failed'
Submitted by JustAl on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 10:16am.
Exactly the same way the American left referred to the USSR in it's final decades.
Health care and death panels; remember that KRUGMAN says
Submitted by TheHistorian on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 12:09pm.
death panels will occur, not just Sarah Palin. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCgQtwIwAg&url=http%...
The decision on the breast cancer med Avastin in the US is a second example. The government chose to limit the care to breast cancer patients, and claims "serious adverse effects of the medication" despite it being used successfully to keep terminal cancer patients alive. A cost decision. Many of these people are on private insurance, not public
Yet we continue to pay huge amounts of money to keep AIDS sufferers alive. There are also substantial adverse impacts from the AIDS meds http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCEQFjAB&url=http%3A.... Seems to me to be another case of the political landscape having intruded on medical care.
Repeal and market decision is the only way to go back to real health care. I cannot find the quote, but the statement that (and I paraphrase) "If the US government were responsible for health care, the US would have the finest iron lung in the world" instead of a polio vaccine.
Dennis Prager
Evidence of failure
Submitted by Galvanic on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 2:34pm.
Over 200 businesses, trade unions, and other employers have applied to HHS and been granted exemptions from the employee insurance requirements of the health care law. The primary reason cited is that the employers will have to lay off employees in order to afford the additional care.
One of those employers is AARP, which was one of the outspoken endorsers of Obamacare.
So, some employers must comply with the law, and over 200 -- including large corporations like McDonalds -- do not.
Kill this law now.
This is why you read bills BEFORE you put them into law!
Submitted by Phryj1 on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 12:58am.
I'd just like to thank Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and ESPECIALLY Nancy Pelosi for foisting the horrible stinker known as Obamacare upon us. Ane the worst part is, Obama, Reid, and the rest of the Dems are far too arrogant to admit they were wrong and will do whatever they can to block attempts to repeal it as long as they possibly can. Hopefully, in 2012 we'll be able to take the White House and get a filibuster-proof conservative majority. Then we can get rid of Obamacare, and hopefully undo a bunch of other crappy liberal policies.
Progressives seem to be completely averse to facts and logic. Apparently, reality has a conservative bias.
The Health Reform Act may
Submitted by Jer on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 1:38am.
The Health Reform Act may very well turn out to be the biggest turkey since Prohibition. And if it is, it will meet a similar fate. But no legislation has ever been so thoroughly and publicly aired and debated in American history than were the provisions of this bill. Nothing else is even remotely close.
Jer
debating of the Health Reform Act
Submitted by Agnostic on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 1:52am.
In truth I have to agree with you about how much the nation debated the bill but little of the bill was ever widely known. There was an article just a few days ago about a portion that was a complete suprise to the "experts". Not that the information wasn't out there but because the media focused on just a couple of parts and then fell back and played defense from the attacks from the right. They wanted the bill to pass and I understand that but playing defense is not their job. 2000 pages were reduced to arguments over 5-7 soundbites and that dominated the airwaves. The bill was never delivered to the public (not counting the political junkies) in a usable and encompassing manner.
Jer's Monday morning howler
Submitted by Tom Blumer on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 7:27am.
Yeah sure, Jer.
I especially remember the rousing debates in both chambers of Congress over the advisability of forcing businesses to fill out billions of new 1099 forms every year for everyone they have paid $600 for any kind of goods or services. (/sarc)
Oh, wait a minute ... according to the New York Times, "many lawmakers were apparently unaware of it when they voted for final passage of the legislation."
You can also bet the ranch that lawmakers were similarly unaware of the marriage-killing, marriage-preventing, incentive-killing nature of ObamaCare's subsidy structure when they voted for or against the bill. Most still are unaware.
Gosh Tom... The provision
Submitted by Jer on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 8:17am.
Gosh Tom...
The provision had only been in the bill for four months prior to passage. Maybe if the Congressional Republicans had been more diligent about familiarizing themselves with legitimate issues and less intent on manufacturing and peddling phony horror stories about death panels they could have considered the implications of the reporting requirements before enactment.
Jer
Gosh Jer
Submitted by Tom Blumer on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 2:50pm.
... you might recall that Republicans voted against ObamaCare for more reasons than can be counted.
Last time I checked, as an individual rep, if you get a 2700-page monstrosity and see every reason to oppose it by the time you get to paragraph 3, you're under no obligation to read the rest, because you know that you're going to vote "no" -- not to mention that to really "read" the bill, you have to have the entire federal code spread out in front of you on a 12x12 desk so you can see what actually happens to the language in every affected section of the code. If you want to argue that GOP leadership may have misprioritized which of the gazillion problematic sections of the law should get most of the attention, there's a place for that, but it may be that the 1099 requirement came in at about #20 on the list, after death panels, heavy tax increases, the Independent Payment Board, the incentive- and marriage-killing subsidy structure, and 15 others.
Also add to the mix the fact that no one knew what Pelosi and Reid were going to keep or throw overboard as they formulated their evolving ram-it-through strategies.
Now you're going to blame the GOP because Democrats didn't read, let alone understand, the bill they voted for. Wow, you can't make this up.
That's your second Monday howler.
The "doc fix".
Submitted by drsamherman on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 8:52pm.
The Democrats are insistent that the doc fix will not be enacted this year. If it is, no matter which party is in control, it will mean a 25% reduction in the fees remitted to physicians for patient care. That would mean that the average physician would have increase patient volume by an unadjusted 33% (1 / 0.75) just to keep the same level of revenue to keep a practice financially viable under Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement standards.
To give you some idea, that means a primary care physician (pediatrician, internist or family practitioner) would have to see anywhere from 10 to 15 more patients per day than the current patient load to keep up the same income to the practice unadjusted for severity.
The way medical billing works, we bill and receive reimbursement based on a three-level office visit exclusive of any procedures, tests or accompanying diagnostics we have to complete for the patient. There are three levels of intensity to most office visits: e.g. simple visit, medium and more complex. The more complex visits are normally the initial patient visit where we take a patient history and poke, prod and question. The medium level is where we are managing the patient or focusing on a single complaint with an additional degree of complexity. The simple visits are things like a status check on a stabilized patient or simple follow-up from a prior moderate or highly complex visit. We are reimbursed based on those three levels. In an inpatient situation (e.g. hospital) we are reimbursed based on a similar schedule.
Even though I am a specialist by definition, my billing is similar to the above. None of my patients fall into the simple category, but I can only bill based on a moderate to severe complexity level, and the time constraints make it difficult to handle more complex patients. On a business level, this makes it difficult to run a practice and on a professional basis makes the line of work far less appealing to those aspiring to become physicians.