Obamacare will shorten lives of elderly patients


by: Betsy McCaughey

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

President Obama is criss-crossing the country, warning that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would “end Medicare as we know it.” Attention, New York’s 3 million seniors: Don’t be fooled. It’s the Obama health law that destroyed Medicare, though the impact will not be felt for another year or more.

Scientific evidence indicates that the changes made by ObamaCare will shorten the lives of some elderly hospital patients and make it hard for Medicare enrollees to get treated. The only thing left of Medicare is the membership card. ...

Cutting hospital payment rates has been tried before, with deadly results. When Medicare cut payments to hospitals in 1997, hospitals hit with the biggest cuts saw death rates for elderly heart-attack patients go up. A $1,000 reduction in what hospitals could spend on a heart-attack patient led to a 6 percent to 8 percent hike in the death rate, due to fewer nurses and other staff, according to a 2011 National Bureau of Economic Research paper.