Reshaping Medicare Brings Hard Choices
By ROBERT PEAR
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.
Giving Doctors Orders
By MAUREEN DOWD
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.
How to Save a Trillion Dollars
By MARK BITTMANMark Bittman on food and all things related.
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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
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.
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Some in GOP squirm over Ryan plan | |||||
| 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
Public health care as sustainable as we want it to beCreated Friday, April 8, 2011 By Robert G. Evans Toronto Star, Tue Jun 01 2010 “There are stark and unpalatable choices that we face with respect to health care, but there is no magic solution. We absolutely must have an adult debate about how we deal with this.” That’s what David Dodge, former governor of the Bank of Canada and former deputy finance minister, told the Liberal policy conference last March. Dodge joined a list of economists and other pundits who predict that public health care will be financially unsustainable in coming years as Canada faces an aging population and escalating costs for scientific advances in care and treatment. But an “adult debate” on the sustainability of public health care must start from who and what drives health-care spending. http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2011/april/public-health-care-as-sustainable-as-we-want-it-to-be |
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