Vol. 76/No. 43      November 26, 2012

This is part of the act’s plans to slash the program, which provides subsidized health care for those over 65 years and the disabled, by $716 billion over the next decade.

This “will result in fewer knee replacements, hip replacements, angioplasty, bypass surgery and cataract operations,” writes Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, in an Oct. 11 Investor’s Business Daily column titled “Obama Administration Dooms Seniors to Ravages of Aging.”

This change “is the beginning of a transition from paying hospitals on the basis of the amount of care they provide,” reports Kaiser Health News. Instead, the government is now putting in place what it euphemistically calls a “value-based purchasing” program—its opposite.

Under this plan Medicare payments to hospitals will be cut by 1 percent this fiscal year. These funds will be set aside in a bonus pool to pay hospitals “based on performance” up to $850 million annually for implementing spending cuts. More than 3,000 acute care hospitals are part of this program as of Oct. 1. The bonus pool will increase to 2 percent of Medicare payments in 2016.

These and other hospital cutbacks under the Obamacare plan adversely affect the quality of care available to seniors and will make it more difficult to find doctors and hospitals willing to accept them.

Richard Foster, chief actuary for Medicare, told Congress last year that 15 percent of hospitals may stop treating those under the program once Obamacare cuts take effect, writes McCaughey. By 2030, this could rise to 25 percent, according to a Medicare trustees 2012 report.

Those getting care will also find fewer nurses having to treat a greater number of patients, as hospitals lay off more health care workers as part of cutting their costs of operation.

“Research sponsored by the National Institute on Aging,” wrote McCaughey, “shows that heart attack patients at the lowest-spending hospitals are 19% more likely to die than patients of the same age at higher-spending hospitals. Yet the Obama health law pushes all hospitals to imitate the lowest spending ones.”

Also taking effect in October are cuts to hospitals that have “excess” readmissions for patients with heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia, and cuts to hospice care. Earlier this year Medicare reduced dialysis treatment services.  
 
 
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