Obama Chows Down on Healthcare Reform

President Barack Obama has decided to take a more hands on approach to healthcare reform, with plans for speeches, town hall meetings, and direct meetings with legislators, instead of sitting back and waiting for Congress to mess things up. That might be a good thing, rather than sit back and let people like Max Baucus (D-Montana) bring all the special interest groups to the table (health insurance (AHIP), hospitals (AHA), Pharma, and doctors (AMA)) and chow down while the rest of us get crumbs (see “Medical Gang of Four Cling to Table of Healthcare Reform“).

Mmmm. Supper time for medical Gang of Four: (from L) Max Baucus (D-Mont), Karen Ignagni (AHIP), Rich Umbdenstock (AHA), Billy Tauzin (PhRMA), Nancy Nielsen MD (AMA).

Don’t forget to toss some yummies to David Nexon (Medical devices, AMTA). Ruff!

The unidentified man looking away is probably a Canadian spy.

Well just in case you were feeling depressed the Medical Gang of Four all gave us a laugh last week by offering to (as I wrote before) voluntarily cut spending by two trillion over the next ten years (how they would do this is a mystery, but it surely won’t involve cutting out the 30% of medical tests, scans and screenings that are useless for the patient). Conveniently this is about what Obama would need in order to introduce a government health insurance. However Karen at the AHIP is probably flipping out about him using the “g” word since she knows that private health insurance companies in the US with their bloated 25% administrative overhead costs could never compete with a government plan that has a 2% administrative overhead cost, and that anyone in their right mind would choose the government plan, unless they had money to burn. Billy also doesn’t want a healthcare plan that would be able to negotiate lower drug costs. In fact as we speak they are lobbying to get the government plan parceled into many smaller entities or relegated to the states. In other words take the teeth out of any negotiating power that the plan would have. An alternative floated by Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) is to have the government plan only come into effect if it is “triggered” by excessive healthcare costs somewhere several years down the road (i.e. never). One thing for sure is that whomever kills the healthcare plan doesn’t want to be caught with the murder weapon in their hands. It looks like all of this is going to go down pretty quick as Obama just announced that he wants to finish this during this legislative session.

Burning money to keep warm

Well as Sen Grassley said if he wants to take on healthcare reform himself he better put on his kid gloves. As I have said before he is swimming in shark infested waters taking on healthcare reform. 

Good luck.