Remember When News Used To Be Informative?

This is why Fox News beats the pants off of the competition. Today Bret Baier hosted a special on the Medicare issue. In this segment he had Rep Paul Ryan (R) and Rep Chris Van Hollen (D) on to present their sides of the argument and to debate each other. This segment is but 10 minutes out of the 1 hour special but it pretty well sums up how the debate is going to go.

Rep Ryan was as sharp as ever and Van Hollen's arguments always seem to go off on a tangent with references to tax breaks for oil companies, raising taxes on the rich or that Medicare wasn't really in that much trouble and we shouldn't be trying to take action until it is in it's death throes.

Of course more people are probably watching the Weiner spectacle or Casey Anthony trial more closely then they are this important issue which is what allows the Dems to demagogue the hell out it and distort the matter.

Without knowing all that much about either man it is certainly clear that Rep Ryan is the point man when it comes to fiscal matters and if Van Hollen is the best the Dems have to offer, then they very definitely lose the debate, but today it is all about viral You Tube videos and catchy jingles and not so much about substance. To both representative's credit they engaged in a discussion without acrimony, shouting or issuing insults. It is just for me Rep Ryan came with facts and Van Hollen came with a fog machine.

I implore you to spend 10 minutes watching the clip, I am sure Fox will rerun the entire special, or at least I would hope they do, and somehow, someway we could get everybody to watch it and leave your political leanings aside until afterwards. There was a lot of good information presented and Bret did a good job of being a newsman and moderator.

Reality's A Bitch

We report. You decide.
Bill would reduce senior care
Medicare cuts approved by House may affect access to providers

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.

Congress could intervene to avoid such an outcome, but "so doing would likely result in significantly smaller actual savings" than is currently projected, according to the analysis by the chief actuary for the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. That would wipe out a big chunk of the financing for the health-care reform package, which is projected to cost $1.05 trillion over the next decade.

More generally, the report questions whether the country's network of doctors and hospitals would be able to cope with the effects of a reform package expected to add more than 30 million people to the ranks of the insured, many of them through Medicaid, the public health program for the poor.

In the face of greatly increased demand for services, providers are likely to charge higher fees or take patients with better-paying private insurance over Medicaid recipients, "exacerbating existing access problems" in that program, according to the report from Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
....

Toldyaso.

Read the rest at The Washington Post

UPDATE: See Foster's full report.

Three Georgia Doctors Weigh In On the Health Care Debate

When it comes to the health care debate, Georgians are in a unique position. Three of our elected representatives are actually doctors. I tend to listen to them during this whole debate over the health care reform and one of them, Rep. Tom Price, has been doing anything but sitting on the sidelines.

Here is Rep. Broun's and Rep. Price's reaction to the president's speech from last night, along with a video of Rep. Gingrey from a month ago. In Gingrey's video pay attention to some of the taxes and fees he talks about that are in the HR 3200 version of the bill. To the best of my knowledge, none of the items listed have been removed and that sort of information is getting lost in the debate.

Rep. Paul Broun M.D. (R-GA10):



Rep. Tom Price M.D. (R-GA6):

Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) issued the following statement in response to President Obama’s announcement in a joint session of Congress that he would address medical liability reform by initiating “demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues,” rather than enacting serious legislation to bring down the costs of defensive medicine.

“President Obama never fails to disappoint by glossing over serious problems with hollow gimmicks and polished rhetoric,” said Chairman Tom Price. “We don’t need to test the medical liability crisis; we need to end it. We don’t need demonstration projects; we need common sense medical liability reform legislation. The President has confirmed that his allegiance to the trial bar is far more valuable to him than bringing down health care costs for American patients. Republicans have put serious solutions on the table that can dramatically lower medical costs and ensure doctors can fully focus on healing patients rather than protecting themselves from frivolous lawsuits. As Americans understand that medical liability reform is an essential part of health care reform, we will continue to make our case to the President, but tonight’s announcement was thoroughly disheartening.”

Rep. Phil Gingrey M.D. (R-GA11):



Heck, even our governor is a veterinarian.