Curmudgeon's Corner

My Letter From Kathleen...

Posted by Al Campbell on June 2, 2010

Healthcare, Economy, Political, Quality of Life, Taxes, U.S.

I received a nice letter from Kathleen over the week-end about “Medicare and the New Health Care Law – What it Means for You”.  I couldn’t wait to open it and read the contents.  This Kathleen by the way is Kathleen Sebelius who just happens to be Secretary of Health & Human Services for the United States.  She now runs health care for every man, woman and child in our country with the passage of what is now known as ObamaCare.

Kathleen wrote to me to tell me all about how great this was going to be for me and others who are now receiving their health care through Medicare. 

She tells me that ObamaCare will mean “greater savings and increased quality health care”.  She also tells me that there will be “greater accountability” so that I, my family and my doctor have greater control over our health care instead of those nasty insurance companies.

She promises that my benefits won’t change whether I “get them through Original Medicare or a Medicare Advantage Plan”.

She is, of course, giving me the ‘spin’ version of ObamaCare thinking that I’m not sharp enough to sort out the fact from the fiction.  After all, I am over the age of 65 and everyone knows we oldsters are growing dumber by the minute.  That is probably why so many of us still believe the AARP hype when it’s reality flies in the face of everything but discounts on motel rooms.  That is why AARP has the cushy deal with United Healthcare for Medicare supplement insurance plans, and why it was fully supportive of ObamaCare even as that program made severe changes for those 50 and older.  AARP is nothing more than an arm of our liberal goverment that is in lockstep with our President.

What Kathleen said is that she’ll cut Medicare Advantage payments to “level the playing field” but that I won’t suffer as the result.  She implied that I was being greedy by taking a Medicare Advantage plan since 77% of all Medicare recipients didn’t sign up for that program.  This new level playing field will "gradually eliminate…overpayments to insurance companies”.

What Kathleen apparently didn’t have time to discuss (it was only a four page letter after all) was:

• Medicare Advantage plans are to be killed off and then we can all buy Medicare Supplement insurance plans that cost a lot more than the Medicare Advantage plans.
• The added benefits accorded those of us who have been using Medicare Advantage plans will be lost since Medicare Supplement plans only fill in the big holes in Medicare.
• The doctors whom we seek care from will be closely monitored to ascertain that they are towing the line, the line that will be changed on a regular basis as the screws are tightened to control the costs of Medicare that have been out-of-control for years.
• The wizards who know nothing about health care will make new rules to control docs and hospitals and to tell them what treatments they can and cannot make available to us.
• Congress will continue to claim they’ll control health care cost increases but when they make something available to everyone they can only expect out-of-control inflation.  We’ll never be able to afford health care when it is “free”.
• Primary care doctors, already in very short supply, will become even fewer as those we now have retire and as new doctors opt for specialties that pay more money.
• Doctors in practice are already beginning to opt out of treating Medicare and Medicaid patients.

The spin from our government is unbelievable…literally…we can’t believe what our government is telling us.  Each of us who has ever had any involvement in the financing of health care has known for some time that ObamaCare is smoke and mirrors in its worst form.  As ObamaCare unfolds, that will become common knowledge to anyone who pays attention.

In the meantime, it is really nice to know that I have a friend who’ll write to me every once in awhile to tell what it is I don’t have to have any concerns about.

By the way, you don't skate free if you are under 65.  You will have the "pleasure" of having the government look out for your best interests, too!