"Death Panels by Proxy"

It's no wonder the Democrats won't allow this bill to be posted online! As the details drip out, it's shaping up to be even worse than the monstrosity called HR3200.

-----

EDITORIAL: Death panels by proxy

Baucus bill pressures doctors to stop treatments

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Yes, there are death panels. Its members won't even know whose deaths they are causing. But under the health care bill sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, death panels will indeed exist - oh so cleverly disguised as accountants.

The offending provision is on Pages 80-81 of the unamended Baucus bill, hidden amid a lot of similar legislative mumbo-jumbo about Medicare payments to doctors. The key sentence: "Beginning in 2015, payment would be reduced by five percent if an aggregation of the physician's resource use is at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization." Translated into plain English, it means that in any year in which a particular doctor's average per-patient Medicare costs are in the top 10 percent in the nation, the feds will cut the doctor's payments by 5 percent.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/25/death-panels-by-proxy/