Well, it's actually more. Any way, back to us patients...
__________________________________________________ ______
What Doctors and Patients Have to Lose Under ObamaCare
Changes to Medicare will give the feds control of surgical decisions.
Democrats are touting the American Medical Association's endorsement of President Obama's health plan. But there's an important reason why the American College of Surgeons and 18 other specialty groups are opposed.
The plan's most tangible efforts to restrain medical costs are through its controls on specialist physicians. Based on the government's premise that they often make wasteful treatment decisions, the health-care legislation in Congress will subject doctors to a mix of financial penalties and regulations to constrain their use of the most costly clinical options. The penalties and regulations are aimed first and foremost at surgeons and the medical devices that they use, largely because that's where the bulk of spending is.
It all starts with the sweeping power that the Senate bill gives to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The agency will be given the authority to unilaterally write new rules on when medical devices and drugs can be used, and how they should be priced. In particular, the Obama team wants to give the agency the power to decide when a cheaper medical option will suffice for a given problem and, in turn, when Medicare only has to pay for the least costly alternative.
Full article in the
WSJ here.