Dick Morris argues that Obamacare, which the House is expected to vote on tomorrow, would be fatal to Medicare and consequently to the careers of Democrats who vote for it:
If the House Democratic majority passes Obama's healthcare proposals, one of two things will happen by Election Day, 2010 - and neither one will be healthy for the Democrats seeking re-election.
Either the Medicare cuts will take effect or they will be postponed by a terrified Congress.
If they take effect, physicians' fees will be slashed 21 percent and hospital reimbursements for Medicare patients will be cut by $1.3 billion. Tens of thousands of doctors and thousands of healthcare institutions - hospitals, hospices, outpatient clinics and such - will refuse to treat Medicare patients.
Entire cities could be without one doctor in important specialties who will take care of the elderly on Medicare. Particularly in fields like arthritic and joint pain, doctors will simply refuse to accept the low reimbursement rates they are being offered and hospitals will refuse all but emergency care to Medicare patients.
In effect, the elderly could experience a doctors' strike against Medicare patients.
Obamacare would be very hard on the elderly who would, unless Congress acts to forestall the reimbursement cuts (and thus add to the cost of the bill), be forced to buy expensive medical insurance or go without many of the procedures and checkups that Medicare currently pays for. This is enormously ironic inasmuch as Democrats have been Medicare's biggest supporters ever since it was begun back in the 1960s. It's also ironic because killing Medicare is an act of political self-immolation.
The consensus among people who have studied the bill is that Obamacare will result in higher insurance premiums, less access to health care, lower quality health care, higher taxes, and a higher deficit. And none of this takes into account the crushing effect that the adminstration's plans to grant amnesty to twenty million illegal aliens would have on the system.
Morris, who was an advisor to President Clinton, predicts catastrophe in November's elections:
Either poison - the cuts or the deficit - will be enough to eradicate an entire generation of House and Senate Democrats.
If I were a political cartoonist I think I'd draw a picture of the Roman Coliseum with Congressional Democrats standing en masse in the middle of the arena just before the lions (the voters) are unleashed. The Dems face the emperor, Barack Obama, and with an outstretched arm shout Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant (Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you).
