My wife is a retired country supervisor who helped to manage services payments for 30 years. She is an authority on Medicare/Medicaid. Here is what she told me in a recent interview.
First, Medicare is a service intended for the elderly and poor. As such, all deductions to this service is on the backs of the elderly, the poor, and the indigent. Secondly, Obama used the poor and the elderly to balance his ObamaCare "budget," cutting $716 billion in services to the elderly, the poor and the indigent.
A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report updated the amount of money Obamacare robs out of Medicare from $500 billion to a whopping $716 billion between 2013 and 2022. According to the CBO, the payment cuts in Medicare include:
- A $260 billion payment cut for hospital services affecting the aged and disabled, exclusively.
- A $39 billion payment cut for skilled nursing services effecting private care facilities, nurses in mental health facilities, and in-home care for the elderly and needy.
- A $17 billion payment cut for hospice services -- the poor who are near death are the ones affected by this cut (part of Palin's 'death panels').
- A $66 billion payment cut for home health services. Again, it is the poor and needy most affected by this deduct.
- A $33 billion payment cut for all other services.
- A $156 billion cut in payment rates in Medicare Advantage (MA); $156 billion is before considering interactions with other provisions. The House Ways and Means Committee was able to include interactions with other provisions, estimating the cuts to MA to be even higher, coming in at $308 billion.
Understand that Obama and the Dems added a "stealth" 216 billion dollars to the admitted $500 billion they spoke of during 2009.
Conclusion: Obama's health care reform cuts services to dying seniors in the hospice program, cuts home health care services for seniors and the those handicapped. Services demanding skilled nurses have been cut and hospital services for the indigent and immigrant population have been sorely cut.