{"id":1658,"date":"2010-03-01T08:37:45","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T08:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1658"},"modified":"2010-03-01T08:37:45","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T08:37:45","slug":"one_of_many_reasons_healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1658","title":{"rendered":"One Of Many Reasons Healthcare Insurance Premiums Are Going Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the talking points in the Democrat&#8217;s push for their healthcare reform bill is that private insurance premiums are rising at an exponential rate that people cannot afford.&nbsp; That may be true, but a national takeover of healthcare is not the answer.&nbsp; But let&#8217;s look at one of the reason private insurance costs are going up.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.naplesnews.com\/news\/2010\/feb\/26\/21-percent-medicare-payment-reduction-monday\/\">Naples News<\/a>&nbsp;posted a story stating that unless Congress intervened immediately, Medicare payments to doctors will be reduced 21 per cent starting today.&nbsp; The cut also applies to military members and their families who use the TRICARE program.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>There are some really ugly results of this cut going into effect:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Doctors may reduce the number of Medicare patients they are willing to treat and refuse to take any more Medicare patients&#8211;the rate cut makes treating a Medicare patient more expensive than what the doctor will be paid.&nbsp; In essence, this is rationing healthcare&#8211;if you can&#8217;t find a doctor who will treat you, what good is your insurance?<\/li>\n<li>Because medical costs for doctors will not be reimbursed by Medicare, the doctors will be forced to charge non-Medicare patients more in order to make up the difference.&nbsp; As the doctors raise their rates, the private insurance companies will raise their rates to cover the increase.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The cut to Medicare is one of the reasons insurance premiums will raise rapidly, and that cut is controlled by Congress.&nbsp; At the same time Congress is saying it needs to pass President Obama&#8217;s healthcare bill because private healthcare insurance costs are rapidly rising.&nbsp; Congress is essentially causing a problem it demands legislation to fix.&nbsp; Would you trust a businessman who did that?<\/p>\n<p>The article points out:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p><em>&#8220;A reimbursement cut, of a varying amount, from Medicare is expected annually with the start of the new fiscal year on Jan. 1 but Congress usually acts in time to reverse it. In the final days of the session last year, Congress only postponed the 21-percent cut for this year to March 1.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">It sounds to me as if Congress expected to get healthcare reform pushed through by March and thought it could ignore the Medicare cut this year.&nbsp; There is so much political intrigue swirling around the current push to get healthcare reform through that I really think the right thing to do is tear up the current bill and start from scratch.&nbsp;The goal should be passing a good&nbsp;law that is less than ten pages long.&nbsp; It would be a challenge, but it could be done!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the talking points in the Democrat&#8217;s push for their healthcare reform bill is that private insurance premiums are rising at an exponential rate that people cannot afford.&nbsp; That may be true, but a national takeover of healthcare is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1658\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}