OBAMACARE’S MEDICAID FRAUD

[Geee]

American Spectator:

couple of weeks ago I visited my internist for the annual physical to which she subjects me in order to confirm that my various organs are still operating according to specifications. As she poked and prodded, I asked how her practice was going. This question elicited a resigned sigh and a brief but poignant discourse on the necessity of “firing” her Medicaid patients. Medicaid, the government program that ostensibly provides health coverage for the poor, imposes so much red tape and pays so parsimoniously that she simply cannot afford to treat these patients if she wishes to avoid bankruptcy.

 

This is a conscientious doctor, and she is clearly troubled that Medicaid forces her to choose between solvency and treating patients who truly need care. Nor is she alone. This choice is being forced on physicians across the nation. And the ironically titled Affordable Care Act is about to make the problem far worse. As Avik Roy writes in his new book, How Medicaid Fails the Poor, “Obamacare will shove 17 million more Americans into Medicaid, the developed world’s worst health care system.” Thus, over half of the uninsured ACA will allegedly cover will receive nothing but a useless card.

 

This is the cruelest deception of the “reform” law. As Roy phrases it: “There’s a massive fallacy at the heart of Medicaid and therefore at the heart of Obamacare. It’s the idea that health insurance equals health care.” And, as is usually the case with the deliberately deceptive fallacies promoted by the Democrats, the target victims are poor Americans. Just as Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts will be felt primarily by low-income seniors, its Medicaid fraud will hurt the country’s most vulnerable patients. It will restrict their access to doctors and reduce the quality of what little care they receive.