Part of the reason I appreciate LPSG's political forum is - it's pushing me to understand more of the inner workings of my government. I like figuring out the issues and the politics of the issues as we go along.
ABC News posted this story yesterday:
White House: Industry's Measures Mean Health Care Reform Will Happen This Year
Obama's Team Hails the Industry's Promise to Cut Costs by $2 trillion in Next Decade
"In a move White House officials have called a game-changer, representatives of the major players in the health care industry -- doctors, drug companies, health insurers, hospitals, business and labor -- will come to the White House today to pledge to reduce health care costs by 1.5 percent annually over the next decade.
The savings add up to $2 trillion by 2019, the White House said."
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Apparently, there's a voluntary deal going on between the Obama administration and major health industry groups to lower healthcare costs. Industry groups have made no secret in the past about their opposition to proposals for creating a national public service plan into which anybody could enroll. However, now, sensing democrats have the votes (and momentum, the public support) on their side, they're sitting at the table to negotiate.
Or, as economist Paul Krugman says,
He ends his NYT Sunday column with the lines: "I still wont count my health care chickens until theyre hatched. But this is some of the best policy news Ive heard in a long time."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/opinion/11krugman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
In June, the Finance Committee will release the first version of its health reform bill.
I don't think we'll end up getting what John Conyers has been proposing in Congress since 2003 -- a universal single-payer healthcare system where the government would provide every resident health care free of charge -- but we're definately on the track to something much better than we've got.
Today's "New Republic" column:
Guess Who's Coming to the White House - The Treatment
ABC News posted this story yesterday:
White House: Industry's Measures Mean Health Care Reform Will Happen This Year
Obama's Team Hails the Industry's Promise to Cut Costs by $2 trillion in Next Decade
"In a move White House officials have called a game-changer, representatives of the major players in the health care industry -- doctors, drug companies, health insurers, hospitals, business and labor -- will come to the White House today to pledge to reduce health care costs by 1.5 percent annually over the next decade.
The savings add up to $2 trillion by 2019, the White House said."
--------------------
Apparently, there's a voluntary deal going on between the Obama administration and major health industry groups to lower healthcare costs. Industry groups have made no secret in the past about their opposition to proposals for creating a national public service plan into which anybody could enroll. However, now, sensing democrats have the votes (and momentum, the public support) on their side, they're sitting at the table to negotiate.
Or, as economist Paul Krugman says,
Whats presumably going on here is that key interest groups have realized that health care reform is going to happen no matter what they do, and that aligning themselves with the Party of No will just deny them a seat at the table. (Republicans, after all, still denounce research into which medical procedures are effective and which are not as a dastardly plot to deprive Americans of their freedom to choose.)
Krugman also says: "The fact that the medical-industrial complex is trying to shape health care reform rather than block it is a tremendously good omen. It looks as if America may finally get what every other advanced country already has: a system that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens."
He ends his NYT Sunday column with the lines: "I still wont count my health care chickens until theyre hatched. But this is some of the best policy news Ive heard in a long time."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/opinion/11krugman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
In June, the Finance Committee will release the first version of its health reform bill.
I don't think we'll end up getting what John Conyers has been proposing in Congress since 2003 -- a universal single-payer healthcare system where the government would provide every resident health care free of charge -- but we're definately on the track to something much better than we've got.
Today's "New Republic" column:
Guess Who's Coming to the White House - The Treatment