Cancer Clinics Turning Away Medicare Patients

You didn't get the message when the White House tours were cancelled, so maybe this will get you to pay up, sucker:

Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.

Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially

Patients at these clinics would need to seek treatment elsewhere, such as at hospitals that might not have the capacity to accommodate them.

 “If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York. “The drugs we’re going to lose money on we’re not going to administer right now.”

The sequester cuts of $85 billion this year, amount to around 2.4% of the federal budget. Meanwhile, the General Accounting Office has found over $400 billion wasted every year on duplicative, fragmented and inefficient programs that could be eliminated tomorrow without a second thought. That's almost 11% of the same budget. And that's just for starters, since no business or government can say there aren't at least 10% of inefficiencies to cut everywhere, especially this government. American businesses have done just that and more over the last five years, since they can't print money or take it at the point of a gun when times are tough.

But instead of firing some thumb sitting bureaucrats, or curbing the massive fraud and abuse throughout the system, oncologists and their patients are going to take it in the shorts, even though these doctors are barely breaking even on Medicare as it is. This is extortion, pure and simple. The government beast will be fed or you will suffer, and possibly die. The government can never do with one penny less than the ever increasing amounts it demands. That message will be sent in the most emotional and painful way possible.