The deal was struck! The Bureaucracy was saved! The Budget? Not so much.
All American workers--aside from the shoe stink-dusters at the Senate gym--breathed a sigh of relief. All Americans now work for the Federal Government in some guise and the Shutdown scared Whole Foods to death. Who would buy cheese for $27.65 a pound?
Principled Republicans and Democrats...
Anyway, the politicians who keep us a couple Trillion ahead of a Four Trillion Dollar deficit came together for huge $39.5 Billion--yes, Billion, as in one Facebook share--cut in the non-gym Federal Budget.
But because of Principle...
Anyway, the only way to make the deal work was to finally fix Planned Parenthood.
No, Jesus! Not that kind of "fix". But, hmm, hold that thought.
Planned Parenthood is the Bête Noir of Rightists everywhere, poor choice of racist French adjectives notwithstanding. Most Republicans still think "Bete" is their second favorite century's top movie starlet or an exceptionally good gay-magnet concert performer.
Planned Parenthood advocates planning parenthood. Instead of, like, using the driving beat of Bete's songs to time zygote-production the way the Pope and the Irish tried from before writing not in Latin to 1997 and ended up with floods of green beer and stumbling parades in every American city this side of Utah.
While the Deal that Statesmen... Sen. Not-Nancy Pelosi Reid and House Speaker John Boehner so honorably cut will barely prick the deficit, but it took the... "Planned" out of Parenthood. The staffers, who were right up there with the House masseurs in payment security, are still working out the details, but it is pretty much like this:
Sen. Not-So and Speaker Johnny made a special joint announcement. To a respectful playing of the anthem--borrowed from a film about a ship about as upside down and underwater as your average Fed-- "There Has to Be a Morning After", hauntingly performed by the Irish-French band RU2-486, the Congressional heroes declared that Planned Parenthood [correction] generously agreed to change its name to Parenthood: Home to the Spontaneous Generation [the crack about renaming it as "Fetuses In a Jar Associates", Speaker Johnny said, was "just my funny"], ship its birth control pills to China and turn its considerable marketing skills, instead, to running running gay sex clubs, handing out some FDA-approved "B", ah, hangover remedy and, most importantly, promoting Absinthe.
Library books containing the words "sex", "condom", "pregnancy" and "welfare" will be cleansed, in all generally empty suburban malls, with subsidized gasahol and tax-exempt cigarettes. Henceforth, all TV characters will sleep in wool pajamas in separate Twin Beds, if any of the latter can be found in Hollywood.
Bristol Palin buttons will be worn by all female tweens who seriously can not dance.
Sexually active post-tweens will be requried to marry or swear allegiance to Brigham Young.
Really, no more 3D Katy Perry or 1D Robert Pattinson posters. Or Megan Fox. Anything.
The list, as usual, is only limited by the imagination of Congress...
In an extremely brief Joint Congressional Session, the German-born Pope and the Luau-born TB0 and the now-available-for-weddings-and-bar-mitzvahs Glenn Beck will sign the Budget Deal together, hopefully before the Rapture wisks them, Sen. Harry and Speaker Johnny and all the kids away in the middle of...
Showing posts with label Reid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reid. Show all posts
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Hey, Doc! I'm Old. Let Me In!
Medicare patients, you'd better line up a vet. And not for your dog.
The Washington Wizards--the ones not playing basketball but just as bad--couldn't get their Congressional act together to stop a previously legislated 21% chainsaw cut in the reimbursement Medicare pays physicians.
First, while it is true all doctors drive cars named Mercedes or Porsche, they barely get enough from Medicare patients to cover their fees for malpractice lawyers, who drive Lamborghini's and Bentley's.
Second, why was a 21% cut passed in the first place, since everyone knew doctors wouldn't see old people for half the cost of a decent haircut.?
Thirdly, can't we fire all the doctors?
The last being first, our doctors are not Rhode Island teachers, for God's sake.
The second is easy, too. Nobody wants a doctor who drives a Yaris. What medical school in Haiti produces a Yaris-driving oncologist? I hope my Medicare cardiac surgeon--if there are any left when I can use them--drives a really expensive car and has two more sitting in the five car garage in his beach house.
The first, and last, question requires you up your cynicism dosage by the 48% you pay on your credit card now. Congress does this all the time. They pass a law that "pays for itself" by pretending to cut future expenses, like Medicare reimbursements, knowing full well that they will kill that cut before it actually goes into effect. That way, our leaders can claim to keep budget deficits down under a trillion or so for the next ten years: "Saving $800 Million Dollars in Medicare alone!" They have no intention of actually allowing that savings to happen and, before TBO can find twenty red-white-and blue pens, their staff starts scheduling legislation for next year to reverse the savings.
Goldman Sachs and their Greek clients would be proud.
But something went wrong this year. The Republicans and the Democrats in Congress just couldn't get to it. They were too busy reforming health care and letting an ex-pitcher named Bunning strike out a few million unemployed with just his change-up.
Nobody expected the whole 21% to stick. Congress always changes the number. Not in 2010 they didn't. So, the doctors are extra pissed off. Since they can't do just 79% of a liver transplant or a hip replacement, they are going to take fewer Medicare patients. How you can make out taking both less money per patient and fewer patients, I don't know, but that is the plan. Doctors have to be highly intelligent, but not really business smart.
Perhaps, the doctors figure that The Big O will at least squeeze Nancy and Harry enough to produce a law to make everybody, even twenty-somethings as immortal as I used to be, get a doctor and pay for health care they don't need. And at a decent, insurance-inflated price. The docs may be right.
But that Pelosi-Reid Health Sort-of-Reform Act of 2010 will probably include a mandated 48% cut in insurance payments to doctors in 2011. It has to pay for itself, right?
The Washington Wizards--the ones not playing basketball but just as bad--couldn't get their Congressional act together to stop a previously legislated 21% chainsaw cut in the reimbursement Medicare pays physicians.
First, while it is true all doctors drive cars named Mercedes or Porsche, they barely get enough from Medicare patients to cover their fees for malpractice lawyers, who drive Lamborghini's and Bentley's.
Second, why was a 21% cut passed in the first place, since everyone knew doctors wouldn't see old people for half the cost of a decent haircut.?
Thirdly, can't we fire all the doctors?
The last being first, our doctors are not Rhode Island teachers, for God's sake.
The second is easy, too. Nobody wants a doctor who drives a Yaris. What medical school in Haiti produces a Yaris-driving oncologist? I hope my Medicare cardiac surgeon--if there are any left when I can use them--drives a really expensive car and has two more sitting in the five car garage in his beach house.
The first, and last, question requires you up your cynicism dosage by the 48% you pay on your credit card now. Congress does this all the time. They pass a law that "pays for itself" by pretending to cut future expenses, like Medicare reimbursements, knowing full well that they will kill that cut before it actually goes into effect. That way, our leaders can claim to keep budget deficits down under a trillion or so for the next ten years: "Saving $800 Million Dollars in Medicare alone!" They have no intention of actually allowing that savings to happen and, before TBO can find twenty red-white-and blue pens, their staff starts scheduling legislation for next year to reverse the savings.
Goldman Sachs and their Greek clients would be proud.
But something went wrong this year. The Republicans and the Democrats in Congress just couldn't get to it. They were too busy reforming health care and letting an ex-pitcher named Bunning strike out a few million unemployed with just his change-up.
Nobody expected the whole 21% to stick. Congress always changes the number. Not in 2010 they didn't. So, the doctors are extra pissed off. Since they can't do just 79% of a liver transplant or a hip replacement, they are going to take fewer Medicare patients. How you can make out taking both less money per patient and fewer patients, I don't know, but that is the plan. Doctors have to be highly intelligent, but not really business smart.
Perhaps, the doctors figure that The Big O will at least squeeze Nancy and Harry enough to produce a law to make everybody, even twenty-somethings as immortal as I used to be, get a doctor and pay for health care they don't need. And at a decent, insurance-inflated price. The docs may be right.
But that Pelosi-Reid Health Sort-of-Reform Act of 2010 will probably include a mandated 48% cut in insurance payments to doctors in 2011. It has to pay for itself, right?
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