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Tag: Policy/Politics

HEALTH PLANS/POLICY: Meter Reading–How Regulation Might Fail

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Today I’m up at Spot-on in a piece about the influence of big health plans on reform efforts called Meter Reading: How Regulation Might Fail.

Maybe, just maybe, we’re getting serious about health care.


This week’s news says yet more unlikely allies are advocating healthcare overhaul.


The alliance between the Business Roundtable, unions and interest groups – an even more unlikely bunch of reformers than Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the insurance association  (both already out with their own plans) –  are all saying, loudly and clearly, that something must be done. It’s all leading to an odd sense of optimism – one I don’t, sadly share.


Forces outside of health care are starting to talk the talk about
forcing change. Former Massachusetts governor and Republican
presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s health plan, the election of a
Democratic majority in Congress, and ever- increasing costs are all
forcing everyone to get those old reform plans out again. And as
evidenced in this discussion even political columnists from the WaPo think that something is going to happen – although they do tend to misread the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Continue

As ever come back herre to comment

POLITICS: Sacramento, We Have A Problem

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Up at Spot-on I’m discussing Arnie’s plan — Sacramento, We Have A Problem. As ever, return here to comment.


When looking at the Golden State’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and
his attempt to fix health care, I am reminded of a movie. Not one of
his, rather the scene in Apollo 13
when the crew on the ground had to figure out some wacky mechanical fix
that would enable the guys out in space to filter their oxygen without
using more than the two amps of power they had available. It seems that
we have a similar situation. The prognosis is grim, but the political
reality is that, like the Apollo crew, we need to use the limited
resources at hand.


Schwarzenegger taken on a big job and, it seems, entering his final
four years as governor – a political career that began on a whim – he
doesn’t much care who he takes on. Given that California is roughly 10%
of the nation, with a higher than 10% share of the nation’s uninsured,
most people were expecting that Schwarzenegger would identify covering
all children as the extent of his health-care ambition. Children are
politically palatable – when it comes to health and medicine. But
Schwarzenegger didn’t stop with the children. Instead he actually
believed all the stuff he was saying about all options being on the
table to cure the system and has acted accordingly.


In an address on Monday he introduced a plan
that actually went further towards universal coverage than the one
State Senator Pro Tem Don Perata introduced late last year.
Schwarzenegger called for full universal coverage, and promised to get
there by a mix of what’s known as pay or play – a mandate that
employers must cover their employees or pay a tax – and an individual
mandate compelling citizens to buy health insurance. The details of the
plan are very complex but understandable. Continue Post …

POLICY/POLITICS: I love the guy’s moxie

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Say what you like about Arnold, but you got to give him credit for being a proper flip-flopper with real moxie. While Bush drowns in his stay-the-course quagmire, Arnold has repudiated basically everything he claimed to care about when he first came into office, and is now running like the unaligned centrist everyone thought they were voting for back in 2003.

Today he called for universal coverage based on a comprehensive pay or play, surrounded by an individual mandate. He even brought back the notion of provider taxes, a beast last seen in the wild in the pre-HillaryCare years, but thought to be extinct having been shot by the AMA and AHA back then.

But my favorite of all is the fact that the pay-or-play employer mandate he’s calling for includes all employers with more than 10 employees. In November 2004, just 26 months ago, he told people to veto Prop 72, which had a pay-or-play system for employers with more than 20 employees. Boy, times and people change, don’t they!

POLICY/POLITICS: It’s all the illegal Austrian socialist’s fault

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It’s all quite amusing. You wouldn’t know it, but there are no problems with health care in California, and what Arnie did yesterday was a display of showing his true feelings—a combination of handouts to illegal aliens and an introduction of European socialism.

At least that’s what you’d think if your only source was reading the Los Angeles Times reader comments about the proposal. Methinks that the FreeRepublic or Michelle Malkin crowd was sent over there….

(BTW I’ll be writing more about the Arnie plan at Spot-on tomorrow, but I wrote most of what I think the result will be there last week)

POLICY/POLITICS: Iraq, planning and the VA

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In a op-ed in the LA Times, called The battle of Iraq’s wounded Linda Bilmes points out that the number of wounded servicemen and women from the Iraq war/occupation is incredibly high relative to the 3,000 deaths. Something like 50,000. And once the current generation is discharged from the army, the VA —which is already stretched— is going to be overwhelmed.

I’ve just read Imperial Life in the Emerald City which is a mind-blowing account of exactly how screwed up the initial occupation of Iraq was. Not only was there no plan of any form before the invasion for what the occupation ought to be like, but the only people who were thinking rationally in advance about what it should have been like (in State and other departments) were forcibly prevented from getting involved. I thoroughly recommend the book (by WaPo reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran).

But, as if you needed to know after their “preparations” for occupied Iraq and Katrina, it’s for sure that this Administration has done no planning for the wave of disabled veterans that’s about to hit the VA. Now that they finally control the purse strings, let’s hope the Democrats can do better.

POLICY/POLITICS: Health care reform all the rage

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Arnie is yakking about health care. Over at Spot-on where I’ll be penning a weekly column this year (honest!) I explain why it’s mostly much ado about nuttin’.

Well you can’t trust these people, can you? No sooner than I’d spent all last year explaining why the time wasn’t quite right for health care reform by 2008
,
then just because they eke out a small electoral win, the Democrats—and
every non-loony conservative Republican—comes out with their own health
care reform plans.The new Congress hasn’t even found out where to molest the pages and already Senator Ron Wyden has introduced a comprehensive plan to eliminate employer-based health insurance,
and transform it to a highly regulated individual market.  Not to be
beaten to the punch, AHIP, the insurance industry lobbying group, has
announced a universal insurance plan
that doesn’t get us close to universal insurance, but miraculously
involves lots of government subsidies for insurance companies. Even
more bizarrely, Kaiser Permanente, which signed on to the AHIP plan
despite the distaste with which they must view some of the other
members of the AHIP board, introduced their own separate plan for California. Continue …

POLICY: Peak Oil and Healthcare by Dan Bednarz, Ph.D

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Dan Bednarz from Energy & Healthcare Consultants in Pittsburgh, PA is pretty concerned that you health care types don’t seem to be concerned about Peak Oil. What you say, you’ve never heard of Peak Oil? Better read this then!

America’s healthcare predicament will be resolved in the context of the worldwide energy emergency idiomatically known as “peak oil.” In short, the era of cheap, abundant fossil fuels is entering its twilight and medicine — virtually cut-off from this awareness—is exposed to the consequences. Like any other system healthcare requires energy and resources to function; fossil fuels, especially petroleum, provide both.

Continue reading…

POLITICS: Students interrupt Iran president

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Students interrupt Iran president

The president’s speech was interrupted several times by students, ADWAR reported. Ahmadinejad responded by accusing the protesting students of having no shame and being on the payroll of the United States, according to ADWAR. But he added that he loved each one of them and said, "You insult me but I will respond to you calmly.

Given that he’s a complete nut, it’s good to see that some very brave protestors are letting him know that fact. But I thought it was kind of ironic given that the current American President went through his entire first term (and most of is second) having protestors removed from his speeches before he got there, and the few that ever did get in were roughed up by the Secret Service. The Iranian President apparently spoke to some of the protestors after his speech (presumably so they could be identified and dragged off to jail…).

POLICY/POLITICS/HEALTH PLANS: Igleheart, Glasscock, pussycats

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After a little prompting (i.e. 30 minutes after I posted a blog comment asking why it wasn’t up) Health Affairs has posted a letter I wrote two days ago in response to John Iglehart’s interview with Larry Glasscock in its web exclusives section. I already had some in depth discussion about that over here on THCB, so my letter attempts to use the rifle rather than the shotgun. Let me (and HA) know what you think.