..can you spell Chinese "g e n e r i c"?
Posted on 05/12/2009 5:22:22 AM PDT by reaganaut1
At a news conference yesterday, President Obama said, "I will not rest until the dream of health-care reform is achieved in the United States of America." Normally dreams cost you nothing, but Mr. Obama's determination not to rest until his becomes reality is likely to cost plenty. Yesterday a coalition of private health-system providers, seeing no exit from the administration's reform plans, signed on to the dream.
They agreed in principle to try to shave 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of U.S. health-care costs over the next decade, about $2 trillion. This vague, probably illusory promise isn't much as a matter of policy, but it is a major political development in what is the Obama Presidency's No. 1 priority.
The private groups are calculating that they can better influence this year's bill if they're "partners" instead of villains. They've no doubt seen what happened to Wall Street and Chrysler bondholders. All the same, they must surely know they have made a Faustian bargain that in time will result in price controls and restrictions on care.
The Obama Administration, by contrast, is convinced that it is smart enough to engineer more efficient medical practices out of D.C. The dominant White House voice on health policy is Peter Orszag, the budget chief. He cites research out of Dartmouth that shows health-care spending varies wildly between regions, often with little or no correlation to health outcomes.
Mr. Orszag champions "comparative effectiveness research" -- studying the patterns of clinical practice to determine which drugs and treatments work best. The Administration thinks it can use such analysis to weed out wasteful or unnecessary care by paying more "if the treatment has been shown to be effective and a little less if not," as Mr. Orszag recently told the New Yorker.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
PING
..can you spell Chinese "g e n e r i c"?
Cowed business class my ass. They were the biggest donors to Obama's campaign. The US Chamber of Commerce has been advocating amnesty and guest worker programs and has been filing legal suits against states like AZ and Oklahoma that are cracking down on illegal immigration.
Now the corporate interests want to increase taxpayer subsidization by divesting themselves of health care plans and saddle the USG and the taxpayer with those costs. They are not being "cowed" by the WH on universal health care. They are advocating it and would welcome it in the name of competitiveness.
Big business is the enemy when it comes to immigration and health care. The GOP needs to side with the worker and the people against this unholy alliance.
The showdown with the Catholic Church over its hospitals should be interesting. He’s going to have to “discredit” them.
LOL- Insurance companies are not “health care providers.”
3rd party payers are the entities whom suck all of the profit out of the system, radically (along with lawyers and pharmaceutical companies) raise the cost of health care for all, and then build huge skyscrapers as homage to themselves. all the while, incurring NONE of the risk of health care- this is kept on the shoulders of the real providers- the doctors and nurses in the trenches.
Docs already make far less than they did in the hey day of medicine 30 and 40 years ago. They’re getting ready to make a lot less. And most of the blame can be laid at the feet of the AMA, which has always been willing to sign away the autonomy of the real providers of health care.
When you dine with the devil, it is best to bring a long spoon.
Their idea will be to cut down on the ancillary staff (nursing assistants, unit secretaries, food service workers, housecleaning, transport employees, pharmacy techs, surgical techs) to cut costs. All this serves to do is add additional work to already overworked nurses (high patient load, tons of paperwork to complete). How can a nurse effectively care for the medical needs of her patient when she also has to pass food trays, key in physician orders, clean up the rooms, answer umpteen call bells that a nursing assistant could take care of.
As bad as that may be, wait until the USG starts running the hospitals.
They are signing on under threat of being knee capped.
Orsag equals Magaziner.
My bet is they’ll cut down on the RN’s and employ more (ie- CHEAPER) LPN’s, nursing assistant’s and surgical techs. Heck, that’s already happening.
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