Morris: "Rationing" to Come From Reforms
"How is (President) Obama going to cover 50 million new people without any more doctors or nurses?" Morris asked CBS "Early Show" anchor Maggie Rodriguez. "The answer is he is not. What that's going to mean is rationing, which primarily means that the elderly don't get the medical care they get now."
Morris touched upon a major concern for the elderly community in the health-care debate. The New York Times published an article Friday reporting that some senior citizens in Florida are afraid their Medicare benefits will fall by the wayside. The article also reports that Mr. Obama and other Democrats have pledged to not change benefits for Medicare recipients.
Friday's interview wasn't the first time Morris has criticized an idea not included in the Democrats' plans. As the progressive research center Media Matters for America reported this week, Morris has said lawmakers want to decrease the amount of care available to seniors and provide more health care for "illegal immigrants," even though no such provision is included in any of the reform bills under consideration in Congress.
Morris said he didn't support the reform plan Democratic lawmakers are working on in Congress; however, he said he supported changing the health care system.
"I'm in favor of covering everyone, but the way to do that is expand the number of doctors and the number of nurses," Morris said. "Expand the supply before you expand the demand."
Morris argued that in the end Mr. Obama will have to cut Medicare benefits in order to pay for his reforms.
"What he's saying is 'I'm going to cut reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals,'" Morris said. "If you cut reimbursement rates to doctors, you get shorter office visits and fewer office visits. If you cut them for MRIs, you get fewer MRIs. What this is ultimately going to lead to is fewer and fewer doctors because their income is being cut, more and more patients because the coverage is being expanded."
Morris also said he didn't support Mr. Obama's handling of the economy.
"I used to work for Bill Clinton," Morris said. "And Bill Clinton's approach to solving the crisis was to balance the budget and eliminate the deficit and lower interest rates. What Obama's done is to almost double the deficit. When he took office, federal spending was $3 trillion. Now it's $4 trillion. That's in seven months. I think that this deficit is going to drive up interest rates, going to kindle inflation and force the [Federal Reserve Board] to induce a second recession just like we had in '81 and '82. That's what I call the catastrophe."
Morris appeared on the show to promote his new book "Catastrophe."