This is about "Sunday Opinion" the main editorial page of this august newspaper. This page (the Editorial Board, Publisher, and Editorial Page Editor are collectively referred to in the Newspaper biz as "this Page") has been promoting the Health Care Reform bill from the very beginning, with an alacrity that compels them to use every sleazy rhetorical device.
I even wrote a previous diary, where "this page" ignored expected inflation to state that insurance costs would not go up in 2016. And then there was the acknowledgment in an earlier editorial that "Some doctors believe that defensive medicine is a problem"
But let's just talk about today, Sunday January 10th, 2010, on one single page
I have the actual page before me, but for those who get it online I will provide links, but you have to imagine it as a whole, a single days opinion from "this page" and the readers in Letters to the Editor:
Let's start with their lead Editorial: Health Reform, the States and Medicaid It attempts to explain how Medicare is funded by both the Federal and State Governments, and the valiant attempt at simplification fails---it can't be done, as the special regulations, each state's unique arrangement is too damn complex. After a half dozen paragraphs they acknowledge:
That may sound arcane.....
snip-
Instead of paying more for people already on the rolls, Congress should try to provide an enhanced share to all states for all new Medicaid enrollees, whether or not they were previously eligible.
Well, of course. If the states can't afford this then "Congress" should pay for it. By that they don't mean the members of congress, or even the taxpayers, they must mean that it should be put on the tab, you know the deficit. I wish The Page would at least quote an authority for this practice, such as Vice President Richard Cheney who is quoted as proclaiming that, "Deficits Don't Matter."
But in their endorsement of Medicaid, and their proclamation that it should be expanded to the maximum is based on this:
It is important to remember that under the reform bills, all of these people would gain access to health insurance — either through Medicaid or through federally subsidized private insurance plans. Medicaid is a better deal for poor people because it typically charges much less in co-payments and premiums for a better package of benefits than private insurers are apt to provide. From an overall budgetary standpoint, Medicaid is also the cheapest way to insure people since it reimburses hospitals, doctors and other providers at a lower rate than private insurers do.
I almost always link my statements to authoritative sources, but in this case I'll hold off, if questioned I will look it up and include it, but my sources are usually the Chief Actuary of Medicare or often the New York Times News Section, which actually describes the real world of Medical Care in the United States, with incisive articles by those such as David Leonhardt, who by the way wrote of the house bill, "This is not reform."
The Medicaid that the Times would dramatically expand does some problems. Specifically, because it pays providers at a lower rate than private insurers, most providers do not take it. So, right now some 30% of those who have this insurance, the same one that this "reform" would expand end up in Emergency Wards for primary care. As the Chief Medicare Actuary writes in his professional understated manner:
-----
(pp15, par 3) In estimating the financial impacts of H.R.3962, we assumed that the increased demand for health care services could be met without market disruptions. In practice, supply constraints might interfere with providing the services desired by the additional 34 million insured persons. Price reactions-that is, providers successfully negotiating higher fees in response to greater demand-could result in higher total expenditures or in some of this demand being unsatisfied. Alternatively, providers might tend to accept more patients who have private insurance and fewer Medicaid patients
-----
The New York Times simply ignores such realities like this. Look, I've been reading the N.Y Times regularly since it sold for a nickle. And it's still my home page on the internet. But on this reform legislation, the Editorial Page is in their own world, descending into a parody of themselves.
----------
And for a further bit of irony, you have to go to the side of the editorial to the letterssection. On the same page where you can read how effective government control over health insurance companies will be, you can read how this is working in another arena, the Department of Agriculture control over processed food.
........The United States Department of Agriculture has been broken for a long time, and it is clear that it cannot protect the American public from illness and death from contaminated meat products. How many more Americans must die before something is done?
In the United States Department of Agriculture’s dual, and often conflicting, roles as protector of consumers and promoter of agricultural products, it has once again made a clear choice.
By approving the revolting and often ineffective use of ammonia to sanitize the results of substandard meat processing, it has chosen the profits of big business over food safety for all Americans.
This has a name, Regulatory Capture, and many people, including the Senior Editor of Harpers Magazine (described here) see this HCR bill as simply a case of the Democratic party choosing to be the party of Insurers, Big Pharma and other powerful interests.
Of course the N.Y. Times Editorial Page wouldn't even consider this, as it has become a continuing advertisement for a product that just could be as good for our nations health as the hamburger currently being regulated by the United States Government.