UPDATE: Now They Admit It—What Americans Can Expect From This Administration

June 3, 2009 (LPAC)—At a full-dress Administration event this morning on the Obama Hitler-healthcare "reform" drive, in response to a question from EIR's Paul Gallagher, top White House advisors Larry Summers and Peter Orszag, as well as White House staffer Linda Douglass, finally admitted the truth: that the Obama White House is preparing drastic cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. Douglass went so far as to say that Obama's budget calls for $300 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over ten years. (The combined budget for Medicare and Medicaid totalled $682 billion in 2008.)

After EIR's Paul Gallagher took the floor to accuse the Obama Administration of defining some lives as "not worthy of being lived," just as the Nazis did earlier, Obama's National Economic Advisor Larry Summers took the floor to clarify that "The coverage savings that the Administration anticipates to go with expansion of coverage, are being paid for, in large part, by direct changes in identified costs paid to providers; measures such as 'Medicare Advantage' reform. THOSE MEASURES, ON THOSE PROGRAMS, MEDICARE AND MEDICAID, WILL PROVIDE FOR A BALANCED BUDGET."

Thereafter, Budget Director Peter Orszag himself jumped in to say that "cost containment" in medical expenditures is necessary, to keep the system "budget neutral." During this period, "A SIGNIFICANT SHARE OF SHORT-TERM COSTS WILL COME FROM SAVINGS FROM WITHIN MEDICARE AND MEDICAID...."

As the event was ending, White House Staffer Linda Douglass told Gallagher that Obama was proposing $300 billion in cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, and that this figure is given in the President's budget proposal.

The occasion was an Executive Office Building media event, at which Christina Romer, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released her new CEA report, "The Economic Impact of Health Care Reform." Speaking with her were Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), pledging their commitment to pass Obama's desired comprehensive reform legislation this year. Standing behind the panel were Larry Summers, Obama's economics adviser, Peter Orszag, Chairman of the Office of Management and Budget, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House Director of Health Care Reform.

In the question and answer period, Larry Summers, and Peter Orszag, hit on the nature of what to expect from Obama: immediate cuts in Medicare and Medicaid; keep the HMO system no matter what; and cut medical treatment over time, to force a "transformation" in the U.S. health care system to expect more sickness and death.

In her major address on the new White House CEA health care "reform" report, Romer painted an Armageddon picture of out-of-control health-care costs, amounting to 49 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product by 2040, and referring people to the full report, including appendices giving formulae and wild quantifications. She called for "bending the curve" of soaring medical expenses, by taking measures to cut costs. If these are done, Romer painted a fairy-tale picture of results: the Federal deficit will be reduced, resources will be "freed up," and benefits will accrue to the tune of $10,000 a year for every household by 2030!

Senator Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and point person for the White House "reform" drive through Congress, then gave a rah-rah speech on how it is "imperative" to pass medical cost-cutting right away. For example, the system must be reformed to pay doctors for "quality," not "volume." He made a special point to say how there are corporations and insurers [Kaiser Permanente, Geisinger, Wal-Mart and others] who are "doing it right," meaning the HMOs are doing it right.

Senator Dodd, standing in for Sen. Ted Kennedy (D), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee—who has a new health care "reform" bill in tandem with Baucus, then praised the CEA report as adding "credibility" to the reform process.

All of these formulations and terms are exactly those spelled out over the past months by the behavioral economist ranks in the White House, led by Summers and Orszag.

Can You Deny You Are Calling for Nazi-Health Reform?

EIR's Paul Gallagher then posed the question: "You said 'cuts' and 'savings' innumerable times. You even said that as much as a third of the total saving on health is essentially wasted, but you're not talking about... you're leaving the HMOs in charge of the process, who are the source of the great volume of overhead and waste in the system. So, how do you deny that you're talking about rationing care, talking about denying care the way the British health system does with the NICE organization, talking about, in effect, defining lives that are unworthy to be lived—the Nazi-medicine system, because the procedures that they need are not cost-effective. Why not get rid of the HMO's?"

At this point Summers woke up, and Orszag came forward to answer the charge. He began by speaking for Obama. "The President has said that we have a system that is based in part on private insurance...and we are going to retain that. But let me go directly at the heart of your question, because no one here is talking about rationing. What we are talking about, and I'm going to come back again, look at the source of that, most of that thirty percent or so in potential efficiency gained in the health care system. From unnecessary certain procedures, unnecessary days in the hospital, unnecessary applications of technology, and what have you.

"I'm going to again refer to you both the evidence from the Dartmouth [Atlas studies]...and from, on a micro basis, [other stories]. We have very dramatic variations in the way healthcare is practiced across the United States, in which the more efficient providers do not seem to generate worse outcomes than the less efficient providers. In other words, cost and quality are [not in] correlation, and to reference your point, we are not talking about eliminating tests and procedures that are helping people. We are talking about not knowing, and actually doing things that often don't help people, paying for that, we have a payment system that facilitates more such procedures and tests...

"Also, even apart from the financial impact, who wants to be exposed to unnecessary days in the hospital and unnecessary procedures, because those do pose a health threat, which is one hypothesis for why the correlation goes in the opposite direction. So, I would put back to you that after so many years and years of Institute of Medicine and ...and other analyses, and looking at the evidence on these dramatic variations within the United States (I'm not talking about other countries) that there do appear these very significant efficiency improvements within the health care. [We can get the] same or better outcomes at lower cost in the future, and that is what we're talking about."

Summers made a special point of delineating the phases of the cuts in health care in his "Obama reform" plan, for Medicare/Medicaid cuts up front, then more ongoing cuts to bring about "transformation" of the system—a behavioral code term for altering expectations to accept less treatment and more death. He said, "I think this is a crucial point, so I'm going to emphasize it one more time.

"The coverage savings that the Administration anticipates to go with expansion of coverage, are being paid for, in large part, by direct changes in identified costs paid to providers; measures such as 'Medicare Advantage' reform. Those measures, on those programs, Medicare and Medicaid, will provide for a balanced budget.

"Entirely separate from that effort, are a set of major goals for promotion of preventive care, which ultimately will reduce costs. The greater distribution through the system of the benefits of cost-effectiveness research, effectiveness-based medicine; the benefits and savings that come from the improvement of the quality of care that come from information technology; the greater knowledge of the treatment differentials that Peter and Christine have stressed, that will come from the benefits of promoting information technology.

"All of those things, which have the potential to bring about broad cultural change, are NOT being relied on to finance increased coverage. They are a separate component. They are a separate component, given the estimates suggesting that a third of the system is waste. Given the estimate that healthcare inflation in excess of regular inflation is not constant, it's something that varies over time, and varies over time with the degree of government concern with respect to healthcare costs. These costs are the source of the 1.5% savings; and that 1.5% savings bring us the very powerful benefits that Professor Romer's study discussed.

"So it's very important, in looking at this thing, to draw out that approach, to draw that distinction between the components of hard, scoreable savings, and this broader effort at system transformation, which is what this [CEA] study is about."

President Obama himself met with Senators Baucus and Dodd and 18 other Senate Democrats today, to push the Summers Nazi-medicine plan, saying that, it makes no sense to add people to a broken system. This referes to the thematic that, of course, health care insurance will be provided for all, but there must be cuts in treatment.

Baucus, when asked at the Romer/CEA report event, whether he can get legislation through, literally stood on his toes to manically exclaim: "We're doing it this year... This is really fun!... The train has left the station. (For Auschwitz, perhaps?)... Every group had better get on board... This bill is going to be passed this year.... Everybody wants to do it..." With wild glee, he said, "I meet with Larry (Summers) and Pater (Orszag) and Nancy (de Parle) every day!"