Would Managed Care By Any Other Name Smell Any Better?
This is from a New York Times report on President Obama's meeting to plan health care reform strategy with the governors:
Gov. Michael Rounds (SD): "I think [the president] said what we have to do is not call it rationing, because clearly there is from H.M.O. days a concern about rationing."
Gov. Christine Gregoire (WA): The president reminded the governors that "Congress has a bad taste in its mouth from previous experience with managed care," and suggested they avoid the term. Instead, he spoke of "evidence-based care," the practice of using research to guide medical decisions.
Nope, it doesn’t smell any better, and repackaging old policies in new semantics doesn’t exactly seem like the type of change that many Obama supporters were looking for.
The most curioius (actually bizarre) sentence in the article is: "Governors are deeply concerned about the rising price of Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, which makes them natural allies of the president, who has made driving down health costs a centerpiece of his effort." The primary reason for Medicaid's out of control spending is that the federal government funds well over half the costs, motivating states into a race to the bottom of taxpayers' pockets. For every dollar a state increases Medicaid spending, the U.S. government pays the state $1.12 (and this is going up significantly as a result of the February stimulus bill, which includes a massive Medicaid bailout). Governors going to the President for help in controlling health spending is like junkies going to their drug-dealer for a detox program.
Very sneaky.
This is truly revealing. Who do they think they are going to fool?
Charlie-
I love your response because it can also be said of the republicans and conservatives. They have proposed tax credits and healthcare accounts and after all of it, none of that has made a dent in cost or availability, Conservatives just doing the same old tired, proven failure, policies.
Conservatives have PROVEN they do not want reform, they have proven that they want to INCREASE the strangle hold of insurance and pharma over our lives. If they had their wish come true, there would be no Social Security or medicare/medicaid., and we would all have to pay 15-20 thousand a year for health coverage, assuming of course that the insurance company allows you to be insured which leaves out almost 50% of the present population.