Ten Specialist Medical Organizations Blast T4 Proposal

July 21, 2009 (LPAC)—An alliance of specialist medical organizations, the Alliance of Specialty Medicine, has blasted the Rockefeller bill to expand the authority of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), arguing that the consequences could include restrictions of Medicare patients' access to important specialty care service. The Alliance sent a letter to Sen. Rockefeller, his House cosponsor Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), and to Senate Finance leaders Max Baucus and Charles Grassley.

Rockefeller's S. 1111 would give MedPAC authority to decide and implement payment policies, along the model of the Federal Reserve. Its method is similar to that being demanded by OMB Chief Orszag and President Obama, in their draft Independent Medicare Advisory Council Act of 2009, which would let a 5 member Presidential Council of experts set rates, within the constraint of "No Increase in Aggregate Medicare Expenditures." Congress, which now sets rates, would have to reject the decisions within 30 days, or they would go into effect, if the President had approved them.

Once the "experts" are given the power of life or death, through setting rates, the U.S. population will be at their mercy—as was the German population under Hitler's 1939 program, where medical experts decided which lives were "worthy to be lived."

The Specialty doctors have every reason to fear that they—and their patients—are headed for the axe. The CMS, which runs Medicare and Medicaid, already officially proposed, on July 1, cuts in payments for CT scans and MRIs, plus other specialists, in tandem with proposed increases by 6-8% for general practitioners (GPs), family practitioners (FPs), internists, and geriatric doctors. In fact, the accountants who are advising the Obama Administration on health care are determined to cut to the bone for all; As Sen. Pat Roberts wrote in the Washington Post July 18, Medicare already underpays for most services in the range of 30%. The idea that the money will go into providing preventive, primary care—as it was also originally put forward in launching the HMO system—is simply a fraud.