Senator Bogus Pushes Genocide

Speaking at a news briefing sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation (closely related to the genocidal HMO Kaiser Permanente), and Families USA, Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana (aka Bogus) today presented an outline of his "progress" in pushing through the Hitler health plan being promoted by the Obama Administration. The big focus, Bogus said, is to get costs down, and to "align payment with quality." He is working in three areas—delivery of services, coverage, and financing, and argued that the process is "on target" for the crafting of a bill by mid-June. The real guts of his "reform" is to target the "delivery system," which he said is now reimbursing on volume of services, not quality.

Again and again, Bogus repeated that everybody in America (except "illegal aliens") should have health insurance. But not necessarily health care!

When asked a question about how his plan will carry out spending cuts (which are supposed to not only lower the rate of increase in cost, but also keep the whole program 'budget neutral'), Sen. Bogus identified "over-utilization" as the real problem. Citing the Dartmouth studies on regional disparities in health care spending, he declared that the northern high plains states (like his Montana) spend the least money and get the best "outcomes." If we all did that, we'd be better off, he said. We now have incentives for over-utilization and volume, and we need to reverse that. Is he proposing we all get one "quality colonoscopy" for life?

While keeping the details of the bill that he, and his cohort Senator Grassley, are cobbling together secret (except for the fact that the single-payer option has been taken off the table), Sen. Bogus also identified two other areas of "savings:" trimming payments to providers (already underpaid), and looking to eliminate the employer-provided health insurance exclusion from taxation. (This later is figured by the accountants to be worth nearly $200 billion in tax revenue, but they are getting enormous resistance.)