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The big battle in Congress is the Democrats trying to expand the SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) program. Basically this is the program that gets healthcare for kids of families making too much to get onto the Medicaid program. The problem is that the Democrats are trying REALLY hard to expand this even to families of four who make over $80,000 a year. I used to think that those people accusing the Democrats of using this as a covert method to get a national healthcare system were nuts. Not anymore. I recently saw a news talk show where a big Democratic consultant pawned this off as a good thing for kids but started to smirk when the moderator called it for what it was. What is so bad about this? I get that we need a better system. Making everyone a Medicaid patient, however, is not the answer. For those not in the know, Medicaid pays squat. A recent Wall Street Journal article by Vanessa Furhmans nicely pointed out that almost half of all doctors won’t see a Medicaid patient because it ends up costing him or her money to do so. The ones that see Medicaid patients keep their quota to a small level and basically call it charity care. You want to expand SCHIP and Medicaid? Fine. You just better reimburse better and that means a lot more taxes. If you don’t increase the reimbursement, these patients will still have no doctor to see.
2 comments:
Very good.
I know firsthand that health insurance is the devil.
You've earned a link on my blogroll.
The fight for more SCHIP is obvious a mile away. It is politically popular with the ignorant who want to do "whatever it takes for our children." Democrats will always push to expand the government, and spineless Republicans will not oppose it for fear of being called mean accused of protecting the "rich" i.e. actual taxpayers. And now they are actually trying to raise taxes on fine cigars to pay for the little ankle biters! I love cigars! This is another bit of the framework that is being rapidly laid for a de factor national health care system. As with Medicare, when enough doctors refuse Medicaid patients due to poor reimbursement, the feds will pressure state governments (e.g. withholding highway funds) to force docs to accept clients of the killer M's. And leading the charge will be organized medicine and the majority of our colleagues who are philosophical and intellectual cowards for buying into the notion that childrens' health needs trumps the rights to property and free association as pertains to commerce. Why am I repeatedly forced to be financially responsible for someone else's choice to have kids?
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