Doctor: Obamacare will DESTROY and then "RESCUE"

The real name of Obamacare – a name known only to a few policy wonks and politically correct medical students – Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA. With a name like that, who could object to it? Who would be against "patient protection" or "affordable" when it comes to a government-funded program such as Medicare? Really, who would want "unaffordable," though that's generally what we get in government spending programs? But what does "Affordable Care" really mean?

Although Obamacare is fluid, being rewritten hourly, as of this moment, the plan is to create "accountable care organizations," or ACOs. These will be defined by geographic areas that contain a certain number of patients. Currently, for example, a pilot ACO blankets a large area of northwestern Iowa.

You the patient, at first, won't know that you "belong" to the ACO. But the government has assigned you, if you are a Medicare recipient, to a specific ACO. The ACOs will then be held responsible for quality – as defined by government – and for cost containment.

I recently attended a pie-in-the-sky, rah-rah session given by the CFO of one of the new pilot ACOs. He went into great detail about the good deal awaiting those hospital systems that play the game well. The details, as he admitted, are somewhat lacking, as the rules continue to be written. But I got the big picture. The big picture is: This is a three-step shell game to bring about the death of private practice medicine in America.

Here is how it will work.

Step one: America will be sliced up geographically into ACOs, which will gather all sorts of patient-care data for the feds and will be paid a fee for service at Medicare rates. The ACOs will be lauded as the saviors of medicine and given bonuses for quality and cost containment. Currently, they are being offered a 50-percent cash rebate for any savings they bring about. Patients can choose to go anywhere for care, in or out of the ACO. Private practitioners outside the system will be "allowed" to keep practicing, they will not be forced to join the ACOs – that would be un-American – but these small practices will be unable to survive the regulatory burden of Obamacare. So, these doctors will retire early, or close up shop or simply go to work for the ACOs, where they will do better financially.

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http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/obamacares-bigger-plan-destroy-and-rescue/