Despite recent Democrat lies, Obamacare chopped $716 billion out of Medicare to fund a new entitlement. Here’s what that means in human terms -
“a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine … shows that over a four year period, in California, “nearly 14,000 seniors with common conditions—stroke, pneumonia, heart attack, congestive heart failure, hip fractures, and others, died in low-spending hospitals—bottom quintile—but would have survived and recovered and gone home had they received the care available at a higher spending hospital.” She said, “despite this evidence—in fact, in disregard of this evidence—the Obama administration is pushing hospitals in all 50 states to imitate the low-spending hospitals where the death rates are higher!” [former Lt. Governor of New York Betsy] McCaughey concluded that “It is reasonable to predict, based on this evidence, that the regulations and cuts in this law will cost at least 35,000 elderly patients their lives every year. 35,000 patients in hospitals, dying, who could have recovered had they received the care available at a higher spending institution.”
“Not only will Obamacare “cut $247 billion of future funding for payments to hospitals over the next decade,” said McCaughey, in a follow-up interview, “In October 2012, the Obama administration will start awarding ‘bonus points’ to the hospitals that spend the least per senior…And it whacks the higher spending hospitals with demerits, not only for what they spend on a patient while the patient is in the hospital, but also what is spent on that patient for the three months after hospitalization. So hospitals also get hit with demerits for recommending physical therapy after the patient leaves the hospital, or even recommending a doctor’s visit; it’s all counted. These regulations are not going to wring out the fraud, waste, and abuse. No, they are going to force these hospitals to provide a lower standard of care.””
Betsy McCaughey: Obamacare Could Cost 35,000 Elderly Patients Their Lives Every Year
Accuracy In Media — October 11, 2012
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/betsy-mccaughey-obamacare-could-cost-35000-elderly-patients-their-lives-every-year/