NYT: New Panel Will Study Medicaid With Eyes Toward Big Changes

[DeepModem Mom]

New Panel Will Study Medicaid With Eyes Toward Big Changes
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: May 12, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 11 - The Bush administration will create an advisory panel to recommend big changes in Medicaid eligibility and benefits and in the financing of the program, administration officials said Wednesday.

By Sept. 1, the panel is to recommend ways to save $10 billion in Medicaid, the federal-state program that insures more than 50 million low-income people.

A charter establishing the commission says that by Dec. 31, 2006, it will make "longer-term recommendations on the future of the Medicaid program."

The commission will have up to 15 voting members and 18 nonvoting members. The voting members will all be appointed by Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services. Mr. Leavitt rejected bipartisan Congressional pleas for an independent commission under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences.

In approving a budget blueprint last month, Congress called for a Medicaid study commission but did not specify details....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/politics/12medicaid.html

[swag]

1. Gee. I wonder just what kind of changes they'll recommend. Huh.

[Starfury]

2. Here's what Bush wants to fix....

"Medicaid has done a better job at holding down costs than private insurance."

[mike_c]

3. the attack on the elderly and the poor continues apace....

How much longer 'till we bring back the workhouses? Oh-- the sick and infirm probably wouldn't qualify in any event, and since good christian values won't let us euthanize them outright, we must condemn them to die in poverty, of starvation and sickness, both of which we could prevent and treat if not for some diminishment of corporate profits.

I am so angry to see what is happening in America today. We have billions to fight an unjust and illegal war, but we make the working poor and middle class subsidize the rich, and we disenfranchize and isolate the sick and elderly, consigning them to die in destitution. We were one of the richest societies that has ever existed, and we're squadering our wealth on greed and imperialism, while more and more Americans slip into desperate straits.

"The rich get richer and the poor stay sick."

[Occulus]

4. don't forget the $10 TRILLION in offshore accounts n/t

[cornermouse]

7. They won't bring back workhouses.

Workhouses don't turn a profit.

[sandnsea]

5. I know, I know

All 700,000 doctors in the country take a $15,000 a year pay cut.

All done.

[mike_c]

6. that would actually be a good place to start...

...although that pay cut needs to be distributed throughout the health care industry, and needs to be less of a "pay cut" for any one constituency than a reduction in profit taking industry wide.

It's ironic that Cuba-- one of the poorer Caribean nations-- has become a model health care provider and is a next exporter of doctors.