The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.
And Mayo’s decision to cut Medicare patients comes before President Barack Obama’s health reform plan would cut $493 billion from the program. As the President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services warned:
It is important to note that the estimated savings shown in this memorandum for one category of Medicare proposals may be unrealistic. … providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries).
The problem is that Obamacare is not real health care reform. All it does is pretend to control health costs by giving more power to Washington to set and control prices. This is the exact opposite direction of what real health care reform would look like.
