Scamming Our Citizens

It is fair to say that most of us are very angry with the idea of a government takeover of Health Care being forced on us number one, and secondly, we feel abandoned by those organizations that seniors have come to trust as representing their interests. I have found the reasons and it is in a word, scamming our citizens.

The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians' reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. In one of the actions most infuriating seniors has been the willingness of the AARP to back his plan. Let me assure you that for them, it will be and always has been about making money.

The AARP receives a financial windfall for its support. It is a main supplier of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed and established the Medicare Advantage program which offered a much lower subsidized, alternative to Medi-gap. So more than 10 million seniors turned to this program cutting into the AARP revenues. No problem. The President simply promised to eliminate the subsidies for Medicare Advantage, but the AARP, which supposedly represents them will make more money. By the way, the drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10 year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. They also got government assurances of a continued ban on lower cost Canadian drugs from coming into the United States.

This past Saturday before the House vote on the Health Bill, "Queen Nancy" had one more card up her sleeve. The centerpiece of her pressurized campaign was a Saturday address by President Obama in the Cannon Office Building, where Obama warned and I quote: "Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit (Democratic voters) and it will encourage the extremists." Here we go again folks...we are just a bunch of extremists!