Big Fat Story
Reducing costs, a major concern for Republicans but also many Democrats, may be top of the agenda at Obama’s summit—his own budget chief estimates that 5 percent of GDP, $700 billion a year, goes to medical tests and procedures that don't improve health outcomes. Floated ideas include establishing a “Health Fed” that would recommend ways of keeping within budget, and a cleverly titled plan to “spread the Mayo,” which would mimic the Mayo Clinic’s “integrated care” model by having a single doctor oversee all aspects of a patient’s treatment, improving health and cutting costs. Expect to see a meeting of different minds: Everyone from Newt Gingrich to former Clinton White House health adviser Chris Jennings should be in attendance.
Obama proposals quiet the critics—for now.
Obama may have made it impossible for any Republican—save the right-wing radio commentators—to meaningfully oppose his health-care reform package. Republican Senate leader Charles Grassley of Iowa, while concerned about spending, praised the president’s attention to budgetary concerns while pursuing reform. Meanwhile, conservatives are left using classic scare tactics to enrage Republicans over the possibility that Obama is secretly moving toward a socialized-medicine proposal. But even they have to acknowledge that some Republicans, like former New York lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, have lent their skills to the reformers in the hopes of repairing a damaged health-care system at last.
Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images
Will Republicans stonewall her out of spite?
Pushing through health-care reform is no picnic, but selecting someone who’s despised by the opposing team to spearhead the effort can make it verge on the impossible. Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, is nearly as reviled by conservatives as Hillary Clinton was in the 1990s when she led the task force to come up with a plan for universal health care. Not only is Sebelius pro-choice, she held an event in 2007 at the governor’s mansion with Dr. George Tiller, who at the time was under investigation for violating state restrictions on late-term abortions. Tiller denies the charges, but the right wing has furiously cited the story to brand Sebelius as unacceptable. If one assumes Hillarycare failed in part because of personal beefs the Republicans had with her—they did nickname the proposal after her—it doesn’t bode well for Sebelius’ efforts in the same arena, should she be confirmed.
Photo: Orlin Wagner / AP Photo
Who Killed Health Care Reform?
Fifteen years after Hillary's debacle, President Obama convenes a bipartisan summit this week to put health-care reform back on the agenda. Can the forces against reform be defeated this time?
Liberals woo the unhappy couple.
Will Harry and Louise take the liberals’ side this time? In 1993, conservatives invented the curmudgeonly middle-class couple for a series of commercials that helped defeat the Clinton health-care plan. Now that liberal lobbyists are gearing up to fight for the Democrats’ pet causes, it seems likely that Harry and Louise could resurface in television commercials backing the Obama health-care proposals. The couple returned to television during the conventions last summer, after a 15-year absence—advocating reform. Last time they opposed government red tape; this time the kitchen-table debate will turn on budget concerns. Reformers want Harry and Louise on their team.
Even with 60 Democrats in the Senate, it would be risky to put health-care reform up for a vote—fillibusters can be dangerous. So Obama strategists may use Senate rules to bypass that possibility. If they use the budget reconciliation process instead of a traditional vote, Obama only needs 50 ayes to get key elements of his health-care reform package through the Senate. But even Democrats worry that using the rules that way might cause controversy and alienate voters. It’s “the key to our future,” Obama’s budget director says of health-care reform, floating the possible alternative approach in the comparatively safe forum of a Sunday talk show.
Photo: Ron Edmonds / AP Photo
Daschle’s departure may hurt Kennedy's cause.
Health-care champion Ted Kennedy is about to find out if he picked the right horse in the 2008 race to cement his legacy. With reform as his No. 1 issue, Obama’s promises made the most sense last year and won the candidate the crucial Kennedy endorsement, over Hillary Clinton. But now that Kennedy’s Senate colleague Tom Daschle will no longer lead the Obama reform team, is the Massachusetts senator worried that things might not turn out quite the way he once envisioned? A Kansas governor running Senate interference can’t be exactly the sort of political endgame strategy for reform that Kennedy had in mind.
Photo: Susan Walsh / AP Photo
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Who killed Healthcare reform? The Republicans. The Republicans don't want anything for anybody that doesn't put money in THEIR pockets. There is no way to get money out of helping people. You can't rip off poor people so just don't deal with the poor or those who need help.
Obama's plan is not health care reform. his plan is to expand Medicaid to all Americans. private health insurace would be a thing of the past under Obama's "plan"
that is not reform-- it is making everyone eligible for Medicaid. Medicaid is a program of last resort,and there is a reason why virtually no docs accept it--it pays crap.it is taking middle class americans and shoving them into healthcare that is much less than they have received in the past. and believe me, this will not tempt the best and brightes into medicine. NONE of the best and brightest accept Medicaid.
The way to sell this to business men (and Republicans be damned, they know which side their bread's buttered on,) is to offer to get the cost of health-don't-care off of their books and the insurance companies out of their hair.
Like the Republicans, and their f*ck the poor attitude, business men are plenty pissed at having to pay for entire departments to take care of what is a drain on their bottom line.
They *hate* having to pay for it all.
You can sell health care reform as improving business efficiency and taking care of the bottom line by removing the costs from their books.
You can then sell health care reform from a point of view of improving efficiencies by moving to a single payer system (which would eliminate redundancies in part #s, procedures and all of the crappy cruft that the medical supply companies are playing at right now to charge us ten different prices for the same piece.)
Everybody else in the industrialized world reached the same point years ago because they aren't as rich as the United States WAS.
If you as a citizen aren't feeling rich, you have probably reached the point where you feel you've been screwed.
Cuba has better health care than the States and ALL of their citizens are covered.
What's wrong with this picture?
cuba does not have better health care than the US. and to prove it just get a dx of CA from your MD and see how fast you run to Cuba..
yeah, thought not. we need HC reform but not the brand obama is touting which is not touting anything at all. beware folks you will be not happy with Medicaid. The doctor who will serve you got his medical degree in Cuba!
The health insurance industry killed reform. They are the both the problem and the solution. The private insurers are the most inefficient part of the US's non-system health care industrial complex. There should be no profit motive in health care. The best aspects of Obama's proposals will allow the health insurance industry to continue, but take away their dominance of the non-system currently in place.
If you look at the facts about the overall health of Americans compared to that of other developed countries, they speak for themselves. We spend by far the most, and produce results way down the scale. Why is there so much resistance to bringing intelligence to the situation? Who exactly is benefitting with the status quo?
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Hey #7!
I would much rather having insurance companies--AIG, anyone?--decide on my health care, and deny me coverage if I get sick or lose my job. Wouldn't everybody?
Harry and Louise did foretell the future--except that it unfolded under a reign of insurance companies (who paid them) and HMOs, rather than a system ultimately accountable to the people.
Socialized medicine--in the sense of physicians employed directly by the government--is not on the table, except where it has long existed, as with the VA (which rates pretty well in most areas, if not all). Government has long paid for a good deal of medical care--as with Medicare. But of course, those who scream against "socialized medicine" are well represented by those who proclaim, "don't let the government get its hands on my Medicare!". Idiots.
--The Wise Bard
To sadie 101,
You are completely clueless and are simply spouting talking points. The only Democrat in the primaries who supported single-payer was Dennis Kucinich. All the other Dems, in some form or another, were promoting health-care exchanges. This idea mainly boils down to reforming insurance laws to allow several things (in most plans, details differ depending on the candidate): 1. that small businesses and single employee enterprises be allowed to pool together to purchase one plan instead of the current system where each company - even self-employed, like farmers - have to purchase their plans in isolation, i.e. reform the laws to encourage economies of scale; 2. outlaw pre-existing conditions so that everyone can be covered and will not lose or bear a rise in insurance premium cost because of a change in employment; 3. eliminate the 65 year old floor on Medicare to create a financially viable alternative to COBRA - which usually costs more than seeing the doctor yourself. sadie101, don't bring a knife to a gun fight.
And to MrRepublican,
I can't even tell if you're serious because you are so far off its unbelievable that someone with your intelligence level could piece together enough scratch to purchase and maintain the use of a personal computer. But there is always the public library so I won't rule that out. I dare you to name a socialist country in which the things you describe actually occur. In most of the Western European countries banks are not nationalized. In fact, the British people almost sh*t a brick when Gordon Brown nationalized Northern Rock. And while the American rich do enjoy the best healthcare money can buy in this country most of the research that enabled that superior care is done by Unviersity hospitals (i.e. taxpayer subsidized) - that research is not because of corporate hospital profits. Get a clue!
all I am hearing is the comments that all "CITIZENS" need to sacrifice for health care. We are forgetting one group, the physicians. Have you ever seen a" going out of business sale" in front of an office? Limit control of the AMA and increase the number of students enrolled in medical schools. Old term for this is supply and demand. I hope that someone listens to this.
Thank you.
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