Politico: Obama plan to pay for health reform

[OmahaBlueDog]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090613/pl_politico/23697

<<The cuts and savings are likely to engender warnings from providers that de-facto rationing will occur as patients in some areas find themselves unable to find providers willing to perform lab tests, X-rays and the like, due to the lower reimbursement rates.

Hospitals are also likely to protest that the disproportionate share payments, which are targeted for cuts of 75 percent, are vital to maintaining hospitals in costly urban centers, and to keeping teaching hospitals viable. >>

Again, nobody points out the obvious. How does this differ from the arrangements HMOs have now?? Today, most HMO clients cannot use the hospital's in-house lab; they have to go (generally nearby) to a national provider. They almost never can have tests performed in the physician's office. How is what we have right now not rationing?

[Thrill]

1. More scare tactics. This is bullshit. You aren't going to be able to find labs for test and Xrays??

Its amazing people believe this bullshit

[Cleita]

2. One way to turn the bullshit on them is to point out that this is what HMOs

offer in the present system and that they probably are paying twice as much for it as a publicly funded system would cost. A public system could take this shape and that's why I hope our corrupt Congress will seriously look at the Medicare for all option that does not function this way.