Big Brother Obama's Plan to Secretly Check Up On Doctors

The Obama Administration is trying to figure out whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates. According to the NY Times rather than simply ask them, they are creating a squad of "mystery shoppers" to secretly check up on doctors. 

“I don’t like the idea of the government snooping,” said Dr. Raymond Scalettar, an internist in Washington. “It’s a pernicious practice — Big Brother tactics, which should be opposed.”

According to government documents obtained from Obama administration officials, the mystery shoppers will call medical practices and ask if doctors are accepting new patients and, if so, how long the wait would be. The government is eager to know whether doctors give different answers to callers depending on whether they have public insurance, like Medicaid, or private insurance, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

It is interesting that the information was released by the progressive paper of record the NY Times.  Could it be that the information was released on purpose to intimidate doctors into retaining Medicaid?

Dr. George J. Petruncio, a family doctor in Turnersville, N.J., said: “This is not a way to build trust in government. Why should I trust someone who does not correctly identify himself?”

Dr. Stephen C. Albrecht, a family doctor in Olympia, Wash., said: “If federal officials are worried about access to care, they could help us. They don’t have to spy on us.”

Dr. Robert L. Hogue, a family physician in Brownwood, Tex., asked: “Is this a good use of tax money? Probably not. Everybody with a brain knows we do not have enough doctors.”

A multitude of studies including one done by the Chief Medicare Actuary, have predicted that doctors will drop Medicare as result  of the Obamacare bill.

In response to the drumbeat of criticism, a federal health official said doctors need not worry because the data would be kept confidential. “Reports will present aggregate data, and individuals will not be identified,” said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the plan before its final approval by the White House.

Christian J. Stenrud, a Health and Human Services spokesman, said: “Access to primary care is a priority for the administration. This study is an effort to better understand the problem and make sure we are doing everything we can to support primary care physicians, especially in communities where the need is greatest.”

The new health care law includes several provisions intended to increase the supply of primary care doctors, and officials want to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of those policies.

Despite the fact that government says the information will be kept confidential, this program reeks of "Big Brotherism," when you consider that the information is being collected in a stealth manner. Should the information get released it would not be the first time that  government was supposed to keep personal information private but it got released to the public.

Access to care has been a concern in Massachusetts, which provides coverage under a state program cited by many in Congress as a model for President Obama’s health care overhaul.

In a recent study, the Massachusetts Medical Society found that 53 percent of family physicians and 51 percent of internal medicine physicians were not accepting new patients. When new patients could get appointments, they faced long waits, averaging 36 days to see family doctors and 48 days for internists.

In the mystery shopper survey, administration officials said, a federal contractor will call the offices of 4,185 doctors — 465 in each of nine states: Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. The doctors will include pediatricians and obstetrician-gynecologists.

The calls are to begin in a few months, with preliminary results from the survey expected next spring. Each office will be called at least twice — by a person who supposedly has private insurance and by someone who supposedly has public insurance.

Federal officials provided this example of a script for a caller in a managed care plan known as a preferred provider organization, or P.P.O.:

Mystery shopper: “Hi, my name is Alexis Jackson, and I’m calling to schedule the next available appointment with Dr. Michael Krane. I am a new patient with a P.P.O. from Aetna. I just moved to the area and don’t yet have a primary doctor, but I need to be seen as soon as possible.”

Doctor’s office: “What type of problem are you experiencing?”

Mystery shopper: “I’ve had a cough for the last two weeks, and now I’m running a fever. I’ve been coughing up thick greenish mucus that has some blood in it, and I’m a little short of breath.”

In separate interviews, several doctors said that patients with those symptoms should immediately see a doctor because the symptoms could indicate pneumonia, lung cancer or a blood clot in the lungs.

Other mystery shoppers will try to schedule appointments for routine care, like an annual checkup for an adult or a sports physical for a high school athlete.

To make sure they are not detected, secret shoppers will hide their telephone numbers by blocking caller ID information.

Eleven percent of the doctors will be called a third time. The callers will identify themselves as calling “on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.” They will ask whether the doctors accept private insurance, Medicaid or Medicare, and whether they take “self-pay patients.” The study will note any discrepancies between those answers and the ones given to mystery shoppers.

The administration has signed a contract with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to help conduct the survey.

Certainly as we get closer to the full implementation of Obamacare, collecting this kind of information will become more important. However, there is no reason for the government to seek out this information on a stealth basis, unless its true purpose was not collecting information but to intimidate doctors to "keep with the program" and continue to accept new Medicare patients.

Brand New Screw-up Found In Obamacare Law: Extra 3 Million Middle Class Americans Qualify For Free Health Care

Nancy Pelosi has been proven correct once again. Remember when she said we wouldn't really find out what is in the bill until it was passed. I hate to admit it, but we have found out so much since the bill was passed. Things like $500 billion dollars was double counted and thirty percent of employees will lose their company paid health care benefits are just two of the many revelations about the President's signature legislation that the public was informed of after the bill's passage.

The latest revelation?  Through an unintended consequence, several million middle-class early retirees will get nearly free insurance meant for the poor.  A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said the medicare actuary office.  This could add up to three million people to what will already be a crowded patient pool

That's because, in a major change from today, most of their Social Security benefits would no longer be counted as income for determining eligibility.

Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster says the situation keeps him up at night.

"I don't generally comment on the pros or cons of policy, but that just doesn't make sense," Foster said during a question-and-answer session at a recent professional society meeting. It's almost like allowing middle-class people to qualify for food stamps, he suggested.

"This is a situation that got no attention at all," added Foster. "And even now, as I raise the issue with various policymakers, people are not rushing to say ... we need to do something about this."

The progressives who shoved the bill down the country's throat say that the "oops" was a result of a well-meaning effort to simplify rules for deciding who will get help with insurance costs under the new health care law. Instead of rules in individual states, there will be one national law.

"This simplification will stop people from falling into coverage gaps and may cause some to be newly eligible for Medicaid and others to no longer qualify," said Brian Cook, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Along with adding expenses to the federal budget, this unnecessary addition to the health care roles will hurt the already cash-strapped states.

But states have been clamoring for relief from Medicaid costs, complaining that just these sorts of federal rules drive up spending and limit state options. The program is now one of the top issues in budget negotiations between the White House and Congress. Republicans are pushing for a rollback of federal requirements that block states from limiting eligibility.

Medicaid is a safety net program that serves more than 50 million vulnerable Americans, from low-income children and pregnant women to Alzheimer's patients in nursing homes. It's designed as a federal-state partnership, with Washington paying close to 60 percent of the total cost.

Early retirees would be a new group for Medicaid. While retirees can now start collecting Social Security at age 62, they must wait another three years to get Medicare, unless they're disabled.

Some early retirees who worked all their lives may not want to be associated with a health care program for the poor, but others might see it as a relatively painless way to satisfy the new law's requirement that all Americans carry medical insurance starting in 2014. It would help tide them over until they turn 65 and qualify for Medicare.

The actuary's office said the 3 million early retirees who would become eligible for Medicaid are on top of an estimated 16 million to 20 million people that Obama's law would already bring into the program, by opening it to childless adults with incomes near the poverty level. Federal taxpayers will cover all of the initial cost of the expansion.

A spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee, Erin Shields, said there is plenty of time to fix the problem. 

"These changes don't take effect until 2014, so we have time to review all possible cases to ensure Medicaid meets its mission of serving only the neediest Americans," said Erin Shields.

But former Utah governor Mike Leavitt said these 3 million early retirees will "just add fuel to the fire," bolstering the argument that some of Washington's rules don't make sense.

"The fact that this is being discovered now tells you, what else is baked into this law?" said Leavitt, who served as Health and Human Services secretary under President George H.W. Bush.

On the other hand, it proves that Nancy Pelosi was not lying (this time).

Chris Christie: Obamacare is Killing the States

Widely reported in the blog world is the fact that the latest projections show that Obamacare will increase the federal deficit, not decrease it as progressives contend. What is not widely reported is that the mandates that accompany the government run-health care plan saddle the states with an oppressive financial burden.

CNS News spoke to conservatives favorite Governor Chris Christie who says that the problem is not only the financial burden but the fact that there is no flexibility in the way states are allowed to provide benefits:

“Listen, I think that there’s got to be a credible plan that’s put forward that deals with entitlements in a serious way," said Christie on the red carpet of MSNBC's White House Correspondents Dinner after-party. "And, you know, I think Congressman [Paul] Ryan’s got a good set of ideas there. Whether it’s the only way to go, we’ll wait and see.

"But I think as a governor what I’m most concerned about is getting us some more flexibility in Medicaid," said Christie. "It’s really kind of drowning the states. And so if his budget gives us more flexibility in Medicaid, I think that would be good. But you know I’m more concerned about what I have to do in New Jersey than I’m concerned about what they’re going to do nationally.”

Christie said the Medicaid mandates under the health care law are the largest concern for New Jersey.

“It’s Medicaid. It’s the biggest thing. I mean, our Medicaid program is $1.4 billion in deficit this year and because of Obamacare we can’t change the level of benefit that we offer because of the mandates that they’ve put on us. And, I think, you know, if we’re going to pay for 50 percent of it, we should have some control over it and the way this administration’s done it is they just want to control all of it. So, that’s the biggest problem for us,” he said.

Beginning in 2014, the health care law requires states to cover every individual under Medicaid whose income is equivalent to 133 percent of the poverty level or less.

 Typical progressive strategy, not only did they kick the "cost can" down the road with their funky accounting such as double counting the medicare cuts, but they also kicked it toward the states, who are stuck with half the cost, but no say in how it's spent.