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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Health Care Reform Articles - April 13, 2011

April 12, 2011

Reshaping Medicare Brings Hard Choices







WASHINGTON — President Obama has deep disagreements with House Republicans about how to addressMedicare’s long-term problems. But in deciding to wade into the fight over entitlements, which he may address in a speech Wednesday afternoon, the president is signaling that he too believes Medicare must change to avert a potentially crippling fiscal crunch.
So the real issue now is not so much whether to re-engineer Medicare to deal with an aging population and rising medical costs, but how.


April 12, 2011

Giving Doctors Orders




WASHINGTON
When my brother went into the hospital with pneumonia, he quickly contracted four other infections in the intensive care unit.
Anguished, I asked a young doctor why this was happening. Wearing a white lab coat and blue tie, he did a show-and-tell. He leaned over Michael and let his tie brush my sedated brother’s hospital gown.
“It could be anything,” he said. “It could be my tie spreading germs.”
I was dumbfounded. “Then why do you wear a tie?” I asked. He shrugged and left for rounds.

APRIL 12, 2011, 8:30 PM

How to Save a Trillion Dollars

Mark Bittman on food and all things related.
In the scheme of things, saving the 38 billion bucks that Congress seems poised to agree upon is not a big deal. A big deal is saving a trillion bucks. And we could do that by preventing disease instead of treating it.
For the first time in history, lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease, some cancers and others kill more people than communicable ones. Treating these diseases — and futile attempts to “cure” them — costs a fortune, more than one-seventh of our GDP.


Ruth Marcus: The safety
net is no hammock 

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/fdcp?unique=1302709539641



Medicare for All Is the Solution

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
13 April 11

Mr. President: Why Medicare Isn't the Problem, It's the Solution
 hope when he tells America how he aims to tame future budget deficits the President doesn't accept conventional Wasington wisdom that the biggest problem in the federal budget is Medicare (and its poor cousin Medicaid).
Medicare isn't the problem. It's the solution.


Some in GOP squirm over Ryan plan
By: Jake Sherman and Marin Cogan
April 12, 2011 09:02 PM EDT
Some Republicans are already squirming over a vote that provides a ready-made campaign ad for their opponents: Rep. Paul Ryan’s fiscal 2012 budget, which will restructure Medicare, alter Medicaid funding and slash $6 trillion from federal spending over 10 years.

Whether they’re new lawmakers in formerly Democratic seats or House veterans who represent districts with large elderly populations dependent on Medicare, a significant number of Republicans realize that embracing the Ryan plan may be one of the most treacherous votes of the year.

So rather than taking a strong stand, they’re hedging during the leadup to the roll call.
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=4C614FCB-911C-0B23-C0CA8022DDE5923E



Obama's health care challenge
By: David Nather
April 13, 2011 07:59 AM EDT
President Barack Obama is trying to shift the terms of the debate on Medicare and Medicaidspending — arguing that there's more waste to be cut before the patients need to feel any pain.
The problem is, the health care law is already trying most of the changes that could get rid of wasted medical spending painlessly — and the experiments aren't even under way yet.
Obama's allies have been hinting that his deficit speech Wednesday will call for doing more to cut overspending on health care. That would shift the terms of the debate to ground that's friendlier to Democrats. Rather than arguing about how much to cut spending — a debate that favors Republicans — Obama has a better chance if he talks about ways to bring down Medicare and Medicaid spending without cutting benefits.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=B5059CBF-05D2-41AA-9121-553973D53A72



Public health care as sustainable as we want it to be





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