Yesterday’s New York Times editorial, “Financing Health Care Reform,” outlines the need to “make the hard choices” including “cutting and reallocating hundreds of billions of dollars from projected spending on Medicare and Medicaid…” However, judging by last week’s action by the Obama Administration to rescind three Medicaid regulations, the Times’ admonition is likely to fall upon deaf ears. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it would rescind three regulations that were designed to place needed fiscal and programmatic accountability in Medicaid. As Medicaid now spends more …
Looking to revive health care reform in Congress, the Obama administration is touting an announcement today by large health care trade associations including the American Medical Association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the American Hospital Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, as well as the Service Employees International Union. Together these big health care giants, allied with the SEIU, have “offered to squeeze $2 trillion in savings from projected increases over the next decade.” But before we sign off on any new health care spending, lets see them actually …
According to the May 5th New York Times, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) has proposed a health care reform “compromise” on the creation of a new public plan to compete with private health insurance. No doubt Schumer is trying to convince moderates that they should ignore Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) frank admissions that a public plan is just the first step of an unprincipled strategy to achieve government run health care. Schumer’s compromise would require that the public plan and private plans would abide by the same rules and regulations. But …
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was less than honest when he totally misrepresented my 2001 essay, “Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.” My point was simple: To achieve significant change, a president needs key appointees dedicated to pursuing his vision and mandate, not entrenched D.C. “wise men” intent on pursuing policies that reflect their own “expert” views. To promote his own “expert” view that the Bush Administration was unqualified to govern, Krugman lifts a sentence fragment from my essay and places it in a false context. Yes, I urged then …
Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama are offering ambitious, comprehensive and expensive health care reform plans. Both would greatly expand health insurance coverage for millions of Americans. Examining the key elements of these two competing plans, one can discern clearly two very different visions of America’s health care future. They are polar opposites. The Obama health plan would centralize power over health care financing and delivery in Washington. The McCain health plan would decentralize control over health care financing and decision-making among individuals and families, while retaining authority in …
With 48.9 million Americans projected to be uninsured in 2010, both Senators McCain and Obama are right to address this problem. While McCain’s health plan focuses on reducing this number through increased private coverage and tax incentives, Obama’s health proposal utilizes a different mechanism, expansion of government coverage as well as Medicaid and SCHIP, among other things. It’s this expansion of low quality delivering public programs that should have eyebrows rising. Doctors often have trouble being reimbursed fully through Medicaid (e.g. Medicaid childbirth pays half the private sector rate), so …
This week’s debate over the Medicare bill (H.R. 6331) ranks as the biggest battle over health care policy since last year’s bitter debate over the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). President Bush, vowing to oppose any bill that would curtail the personal choices or benefit options of seniors enrolled in Medicare, vetoed the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act. Earlier this week, however, the House voted 383 to 41 to override Bush’s veto, and the Senate followed suit, overriding the veto by a vote of …
If the government controls the entire health care system, the recent congressional debate over Medicare is a tart foretaste of what Americans can expect. Last week the Senate passed the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (H.R. 6331) just weeks after the House passed the same bill by lopsided majorities. It could not have happened without congressional Republicans. In the face of the special-interest pressure, the Republican leadership in the House simply collapsed. In the Senate, the Republican leadership was simply abandoned. In his dramatic July 10 …
The Left is winning the big health care policy victories with the help of rank and file GOP members and their feckless Republican Leadership in Congress. The latest example is the enactment of H.R.6331, The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act. In spite of threatened Presidential veto, the bill passed the House this week by a lopsided 355 to 59 vote. The bill does nothing at all to reform the Medicare dinosaur, and every provision simply reinforces its worst features, bureaucratic central planning and its mind numbing price controls. …
