Taking the Gloves Off
On the federal commission to control Medicare spending:
A global budget is like “bombing from 35,000 feet, where you don’t see the faces of the people you kill.”
— Alain Enthoven, Stanford University
On the Dartmouth Atlas claims of wasteful health care spending:
It’s “malarkey.” The idea came from “a bunch of clowns.”
— Richard Cooper, University of Pennsylvania
On ObamaCare:
Their far-reaching overhaul of the health-care system… would almost certainly make matters worse. It would create new, open-ended medical entitlements that threaten higher deficits and would do little to suppress surging health costs… The president, his advisers and allies have… blatantly contradictory objectives [that] require them to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.
Will someone please get a handkerchief for the Obama Administration? Their nose is bleeding…
These are hardhitting. Glad to see Samuelson in the Washington Post lay out the Administraion the way he did.
Dartmouth results are treated like the Gospel by almost all the MSM. So its nice to see a voice of dissent — especially someone who appears to know what he is talking about.
Liberal Democrats have long held the sacred belief that everyone needs comprehensive coverage. Furthermore, they want huge cross-subsidies to limit the cost of coverage for moderate-income families and less-healthy people. These so-called reformers take it on faith that this will somehow reduce the cost of health care (especially if they are allowed to control resources and squeeze the providers).
Having failed to convince CBO, I believe the Democratic Leadership in Congress wants to go ahead with the idea of achieving universal coverage and revisit the cost problem at a later date. They may even believe it will be easier to seize control of health care resources after health coverage becomes a middle-class entitlement and rising expenditures demands a solution.
The Enthoven quote is classic.
It’s hard not to admire Richard Cooper’s Chutzpah.