Obama Attacks 'Critics' of Reform in Speech to AMA; But Deals for 'Allies' Are Falling Apart

June 16, 2009 (LPAC)—President Obama spoke for a full hour to the American Medical Association today and tried to force the AMA "to the table" on his fascist health-care "reform," by telling them everyone else was already there: "This time, all the stakeholders are aligned for, and not against, reform." But he felt compelled to immediately attack "the critics of reform, who are trying to scuttle it with tactics of fear": fear that his plan rations care, appoints national bureaucrats to make decisions on what care is allowed, and "socializes medicine."

The most effective widespread attacks on the Obama health-care plan have, in fact, been the denunciations of it by Lyndon LaRouche and his movement, as a system of denial of care like the Nazis' euthanasia, particularly to the seriously, chronically ill and to poor Americans.

While denying that these charges had any truth, President Obama proceeded to the extraordinary claim ["one study has shown"] that the more is spent on health care in a given area of the country and the more treatments are given, the worse are the "outcomes" in people's health; less health care, then, is better—a rallying call for cutting and denying care. "To make sure the cost cuts are made," Obama said, he was planning to "expand the role, and enforce the recommendations," of the Federal Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) upon hospitals, medical care providers, and insurance plans. He proposed that public and private health plans pay hospitals or groups of doctors based on the "health outcomes" of their patients—which would lead to punishment for treatments given to the sickest people and those near the end of their lives—and that Medicare "discourage hospitals from re-admissions" of the same patient by refusing to pay for such re-admissions.

Obama repeated in detail the message of his Saturday radio address, that he wants to make substantial such cuts in Medicare and Medicaid spending, starting immediately and amounting to $650 billion over a decade.

But a "deal" reported by the New York Times this morning, with Obama supporting limitations on malpractice suits against doctors in exchange for the AMA "getting on board" his "reform," did not work. Obama told the doctors he does not support malpractice damages caps, and their anticipatory applause for such a "deal" turned to silence, and some embarrassed audience laughter at having been taken in by a lure originating in the White House.

And other "reform" deals, with House Democrats, are likewise in trouble. Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and other leading House Members are making clear that they don't want Obama's large cuts in Medicare/Medicaid; and that they, and their labor and other constituents, don't want the tax on employer health benefits to pay for "reform," which Obama has all but agreed on with Democratic leaders in the Senate. This tax would directly hit large numbers of working and middle-class people and raise the cost of their health care, violating President Obama's campaign pledges and attacks on exactly this tax.