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Orszag's National Health Board Is Really One Appointed Bureaucrat

July 21, 2009 (LPAC)—On July 16 Peter Orszag, the "behavioral economist" and health care cutter who heads President Obama's Office of Management and Budget, sent Congressional leaders a letter telling them to put a national health board into their health care "reform" bills. This national board, he said, should have power to decide Medicare/Medicaid payments for every kind of medical treatment. In interviews since, Orszag has insisted this board is "the key game-changer" in Obama's "reform." Economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, leading the resistance to Obama's fascist health care plan, warns this British-inspired "national board" is modeled on what Hitler did with his "T4" health board, which cut off treatments, ending "lives not worthy of life."

Orszag sent Congress legislation to be put into the House and Senate "reform" bills, creating what the White house demands: an "Independent Medicare Advisory Commission" of five physicians. This commission's annual rulings 1) could only freeze or lower total Medicare/Medicaid spending, not increase it; and 2) if approved by the President, could only be voted up or down in total within 30 days by Congress.

But the Orszag demand is actually not that Congress give up control of Medicare/Medicaid expenditures to "a board of five doctors," as he claims. It is far worse.

Orszag's proposed legislation says that "the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)" would get the final review of each of the commission's detailed regulations, after the President and Congress signed off. This appointed bean-counter, if deciding that any of the regulations would overpay for medical treatments, could simply "declare them null and void," and tell the "commission of doctors" to start over, and cut deeper.

In fact, CMS is, right now, about to issue a ruling that Medicare and Medicaid will issue "bundled payments for kidney dialysis" from January 2011 onward. Reuters notes correctly in reporting the ruling: "Under the bundled system, dialysis providers will receive a fixed payment [per patient] for all services and drugs. The dialysis center would effectively profit by spending less money on each patient."


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