12 Comments

Anytime a politician talks about "eliminating waste", you should immediately dismiss him/her. Waste is inherent in the democratic process. AFAIK nobody has ever been successful in all of American history at making big savings by eliminating waste.

When Obama says he's simultaneously going to lower costs and increase coverage, that's even more of a fantasy. That just tells us he's either ignorant, or not telling us what he really wants.

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Why the admin does not try first to eliminate waste and fraud from Medicare/Medicaid and then have Medicaid offered (with fee) to all people that can not afford private care? Is this possible?

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Early in the speech he said these are the facts nobody disputes them. I dispute some of them and I know many people that dispute some of the things head had said. Oh well he is a politician. He seems not worse than most politicians.

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I agree. I think this is more of a "little white lie" than anything.

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While watching the speech, I kept hearing Robin in my head saying "put a tax on medical care!" – but then Obama would say something that would make me think that there is too little care. What's our problem again? We're paying too much, a lot of it for care we don't need, but ... we also need to spend more to ensure even more people have access to largely useless care? [My friend made me leave the room when I started arguing with the TV ...]

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I just hope the commission has really cool uniforms and black helicopters. Imagine clinic and hospital adminstrators hiding under their desks when the 'choppers arrive.

It's hard to take any of this "debate" seriously, when the arguments are seriously flawed to begin with. Can anyone, with a straight face, claim that somehow innovation in drugs and therapies will result in a lessening demand for better treatment? Me? I'm glad that the government didn't get involved in "cost control" of computers, back when 386 PC's were selling for 29-hundred dollars. Imagine the world we would live in today if we controlled IT sector spending to 1979 levels.

The whole debate is a straw man. .

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They plan to get almost $200 billion by cutting the Medicare Advantage subsidy given to private insurance companies to make up for the fact that they're considerably less efficient than Medicare proper. Kind of a no-brainer there. You could get almost all of the rest from cutting back similar Medicare D subsidies - which Obama has promised to let the drug companies keep getting, but a cost-cutting commission could be freed of that promise. And don't forget the grotesque over-prescription of doctor-owned testing equipment like in McAllen, Texas.

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Sounds like rationing. Insurance companies ration care today and any govt plan will do the same. Saying so in this climate=legislation suicide. Our public discourse is too immature for such plainspeak without the other party quickly hijacking the message. What you end up with are ambiguous speeches. So go ahead, tell me what you'll limit and I'll say you're trying to kill grandma.

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Sure it could work if they put teeth in it; I just don't see any signs of teeth.

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I just added to the post.

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It worked in Australia. Best practice style commissions that oversaw and made recommendations to governments, which were followed through on and resulted in less wastage.

Maybe you're just getting too pessimistic.

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If there are actually spending cuts triggers included in it, then the commission might get a lot of political power.

A second thought is that "cutting waste and abuse" is such an easy and effective thing to say, that Obama would be a stupid politician not to talk about it. And Obama proved many times that he's really good at playing politics.

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