Bush's Turn to Health Care

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/15/AR2006011500929_pf.html

Bush's Turn to Health Care
Is the President Ready to Expand the Public Role?



By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, January 16, 2006; A17




This time last year, President Bush was preaching Social Security reform; that got nowhere. This time six months ago, his team was thinking tax reform; it soon got cold feet. Now the new theme is health reform. "This is a big priority for the president," Al Hubbard, the White House national economic adviser, told me Friday. "The system has got to be reformed."

He's right, of course. The U.S. economy as a whole is extraordinarily efficient: Since 1995 productivity has grown twice as fast as in the 1980s and 50 percent faster than in euro land. But U.S. health care is the opposite. It's notoriously inequitable, it generates tens of thousands of fatal errors annually, and it's unbelievably wasteful. It achieves shorter life expectancy than the British, French, German, Canadian or Japanese systems, but it eats up 16 percent of the resources in the economy, compared with between 8 and 11 percent in those other countries. The difference -- 6 percent or so of economic output -- suggests that the waste in the American system comes to $700 billion a year.

Back before Bush was elected, Hubbard convened a private-sector group to wrestle with this challenge. He recruited three academics -- R. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University and John F. Cogan and Daniel P. Kessler of the Hoover Institution -- who continue to influence Hubbard as he ponders what Bush should say about health care in the forthcoming State of the Union address. Conveniently, the trio's thoughts are not a secret. Their five fixes for health care have just been published as a short book.

Some look at the U.S. health mess and see a failure of the market, but the authors insist that government clumsiness prevents the market from working. Modest tort reform would free doctors from practicing expensive defensive medicine. Tougher antitrust policies would prevent price-raising alliances among hospitals. Pruning mandates on health insurers -- which often reflect lobbying by doctors' groups -- might free insurers to cover only the most cost-effective procedures.

[killbotfactory]

1. Yikes...

One can only imagine how much he wants fuck up our already fucked up healthcare system.

[babylonsister]

2. SHIT! It needs to be addressed, but this man has

the negative Midas touch; everything he is involved in turns to shit. It's all just a front, signifying nothing. But will anyone realize that? Perhaps, when they're deciding whether to eat or take their meds or keep warm. :eyes:

[juliana24]

3. We are all going to pay dearly for what has been done in our name.

by * and company.

Karma is coming back to bite us....hard!

[radwriter0555]

4. bush's mangling of health care ALREADY is indicative of how utterly

incompetent and idiotic he is.

His mangling of medicare is worse than the iraqi invasion! We need to start the pointing and yelling about it too... He's getting a free pass on it so far.

[juliana24]

5. I am not on Medicare, but the people who are, are angry at Bush....

I have never heard so much swearing by seniors at the pharmacy before, when they see that they have been stiffed by *s Medicare, Part D Plan.

[Julius Civitatus]

8. Bush has turned Medicare into a fiery wreck

Seriously, since Bush decided to "fix" Medicare, the system has almost collapsed, and the elderly can't get their drugs. It's a colossal disaster. Now he's gonna "fix" healthcare. Great! Everyone better stack up on echinacea, cause it's going to get tough.

:scared:

[Rainscents]

6. PLEASE NO, NO MORE!!!

Bush... please, don't do it!!! Everything this man touched, he had screwed up!!!

[Julius Civitatus]

7. As usual, the WaPo printing Repub propaganda...

Some things never change.

Still, everything Bush touches turns to shit. His recent Medicare reform has turned the system into a DISASTER, and the system is collapsing. Since Bush decided to "fix" Medicare, hundreds of thousands of retired Americans can't get their needed drugs. It's a catastrophe.

That's the way healthcare will go when he's done with it.

[depakid]

11. That wasn't even passable propaganda!

It was a shallow, garbled piece of non-sense with a few right wing buzz words thrown in. There wasn't even any pretense of honest health policy analysis.

Amazing that ANYONE takes the Post seriously anymore. It really is.

[Historic NY]

9. He already wrecked a sensible prescription drug plan.....

so much so that now people are going w/o drugs. Just another bungled scheme to screw those that need it.

[CAG]

10. I'm not too worried... his domestic political capital is nill right now

even in his party. Most repub congressman are finally coming to realize this administration is made up of a bunch of idiots.

"Some look at the U.S. health mess and see a failure of the market, but the authors insist that government clumsiness prevents the market from working. Modest tort reform would free doctors from practicing expensive defensive medicine. Tougher antitrust policies would prevent price-raising alliances among hospitals. Pruning mandates on health insurers -- which often reflect lobbying by doctors' groups -- might free insurers to cover only the most cost-effective procedures."

If the administration goes with these ideas, 1) he'll be playing the same cards of tort reform (which have LITTLE to do with our astronomical health costs); 2) As far as antitrust, you really think this incompetent big business/corporate idiot would actually STRENGTHEN antitrust laws?? and 3) Finally, insurers are already cutting benefits left and right; you think the consumers would buy anything that would create loopholes to allow insurers to cover even LESS???


Only if we have a bunch of idiots in America that would buy any propaganda by the corporate media... uh, oops, we're in trouble, aren't we?