Deficit panel takes tough stance on health costs

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON – The health care cuts proposed by leaders of President Barack Obama's deficit commission would reach virtually every corner of society, making cost curbs in the new overhaul law look tame by comparison.

The plan tackles the unfinished business of Obama's health care remake: how to keep it affordable. An advanced society that guarantees the latest medical technology to nearly all its citizens has to make hard choices about what to pay for and how much.

Workers with solid coverage on the job, seniors, drug companies, trial lawyers, hospitals, doctors, state governments and federal employees would all feel the pinch. For Medicare recipients, the biggest change would be an increase in cost-sharing.

The plan by commission co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson is drawing criticism from groups ranging from AARP to hospitals and labor unions. Is it politically doable?

"Right now, no," said economist Robert Reischauer, an informal adviser to policymakers of both parties on health care. "But we have a huge challenge ahead of us, and if we start by saying this proposal or that proposal is unacceptable, we are never going to get to a solution."

The plan leaves in place Obama's signature health care law expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured, but it would repeal a new long-term care program included in the legislation, calling it "financially unsound."

It would gradually phase out the federal tax break for job-based health plans, a change that would force workers and their families to seek out cost-conscious insurance. Labor unions, which have given up wage increases to secure better coverage, are adamantly opposed.

There are even bigger changes in the proposal. Sarah Palin take note:

For the first time, the government would set — and enforce — an overall budget for Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs that cover more than 100 million people, from Alzheimer's patients in nursing homes to premature babies in hospital intensive care.

Palin attracted wide attention by denouncing nonexistent "death panels" in Obama's overhaul, but a fixed budget as the commissioners propose could lead to denial of payment for medical care in some circumstances.

Overall, the nation will spend about $2.6 trillion this year on health care, and there's evidence that a significant share of that is for procedures and tests that are of little benefit to patients. There seems to be room enough to cut, but no consensus on what should go.
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So, who's crazy now?