A Request for a Little Citizen Legislative Lobbying

Pepper forwarded this to me this afternoon -- he received it from MOAA, a retired Military Officers advocacy group:

Dear General Pepper,

In last Friday's legislative update, we advised you that Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) have joined forces to introduce the bipartisan "Military Health Care Protection Act of 2012" (S. 3203).

This bill would acknowledge that career servicemembers and families pre-pay huge premiums of service and sacrifice, and limit increases in cash TRICARE fees in any year to the percentage increase in military retired pay.

With the Senate Armed Services Committee set to begin drafting its version of the FY2013 Defense Authorization Bill this week, your help is needed to build maximum Senate support for the Lautenberg-Rubio bill as quickly as possible.

Please act now to send your two senators a MOAA-suggested message urging them to cosponsor this important legislation and seek its inclusion in the defense bill.

If anyone gets a free minute or two, and if you're so inclined, we'd very much appreciate your calling S. 3203 to your senators' attention, relay your support, and ask that they sign on as co-sponsors.  You can click on the blue link above to go directly to a pre-fab email (you may draft your own message if you prefer).   

It couldn't hurt to remind those who represent us that this is a big election year, either.  And that not only do you vote, you also have a long memory.  And that you have a big, hungry dog who'd just love to visit the Senators in D.C..

On second thought, maybe you should leave out the part about the big dog.  But, keep it in the back of your mind!

Obamacare: "Be Very Afraid" Starts Today

Well, here's a little uplifter to make your day.  Not.

I went to a doc today for a semi-annual check-in.  He's a really nice guy -- he's a football fan and member of one of the more satiric, irreverent Carnival Krewes, so you know he's got a good sense of humor.  And since he's a rheumatologist who treats people who can have terribly painful chronic conditions, you know he's sympathetic and compassionate.  (Don't worry about Moogie -- she's fine!)

Pepper has been having recurring episodes with an exquisitely painful ankle, so I asked the good Doc today whether he's accepting new patients.  His immediate response?  "Is he on Medicare?  We're not accepting new Medicare patients."  You could tell it pained him to have to say that aloud -- he looked down at his hands and slowly shook his head from side to side as he said it.

Fortunately for us, it turns out that since Pepper has primary insurance and uses Tricare only for secondary coverage at present -- plus Moogie being the charming, stellar, model patient she is, vouching for him -- he agreed to see Pepper.

But.

He explained that his practice can't accept new Medicare/Tricare patients, stay afloat fiscally, and protect its current Medicare/Tricare patients because they're looking at a 30% reimbursement cut after the first of next year.  Hello, Obamacare.

My Daddy told me that, during his last visit to his Primary Care Doc at the Arkansas teaching hospital, before they drew blood for the tests ordered by the doc they ran each test by Tricare/Medicare to see if they'd be accepted.  A few weren't going to be reimbursed because they had been run too recently on other visits.  

After consulting with the doc, they just decided not to do one test.  For another, they already have figured out a way to end-run it through coding. 

So.  Hello, Mr. Obamacare.  It's now apparent that we have active rationing in place despite what the O'Care proponents might aver.  And, more importantly, we have the medical community engaged in proactive mechanisms to game the system.  Not to defraud, mind you, just to game.

I'm not sure what's the scariest part of this whole imbroglio.  There are plenty of options for "scariest," not the least of which involves the Secretary of Health and Human Services tacitly threatening the insurance industry with economic sanctions. 

Halloween must be coming early this year.