Beware the call for universal health care
Here we go.
Daschle told lawmakers it was unacceptable that 1 in 4 people in the United States don’t have health insurance coverage. He said that’s only part of the problem, though. Incentives for reimbursing health care providers are not focused enough on prevention. Also, costs are rising too quickly as insurance premiums rose three times faster than overall inflation during the past nine years.
“Any health care reform plan must achieve the three goals of increasing access and quality while containing cost,” Daschle said.
Daschle said one point of emphasis will be on lowering drug prices for consumers. For example, he said he would support giving the secretary of HHS authority to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare participants.
“I think that there’s a great deal to be said for that,” he said. “I’ve supported it in the past, and I’d support it in the future.”
Critics of that approach say that the private sector is better at generating price concessions than the government.
Daschle also voiced support for reducing a coverage gap in the Medicare drug benefit, known as the doughnut hole, where insurance no longer covers part of the cost of a participant’s medicine.
“It’s a very expensive fix,” Daschle said. “We’ll have to work together to see how we find solutions to that.”
A couple of points. First, the “1 in 4 people in the United States don’t have health insurance coverage” is bogus, and Democrats have been allowed to perpetuate that lie for far too long.
Second, Mark Stein, who guest-hosted for Rush Limbaugh a couple of weeks ago, made one of the most succinct statements on health care I’ve ever heard. To paraphrase, under the free market system, profit-seeking health care providers have a vested interest in treating patients as soon as possible. Under the Canadian and British socialized systems, the government has a vested interested in denying or delaying those same services.
Health secretary pick seeks health care overhaul – Yahoo! News.
