Late Thursday the Associated Press reported that “House Democratic leaders have abandoned a long struggle to appease the most ardent abortion opponents in their ranks, gambling that they can secure the support for President Barack Obama's sweeping health care legislation with showdown votes looming next week.
“In doing so, they are all but counting out a small but potentially decisive group whose views on abortion coverage have become the principal hang-up for Democrats fighting to achieve the biggest change in American health care in generations.”
Meanwhile Thursday evening Igor Volsky reported: “Stupak’s Abortion Gang Falling Apart as Pro-Life Members Admit Senate Bill Won’t Fund Abortions.”
This is, I think, a final turning point in the fight for health care reform. And Pelosi is doing what I thought she would do. I couldn’t imagine that the first woman to become House Speaker would let a relatively small group of people who oppose “a woman’s right to choose” bury health care reform.
Granted, many Americans have misgivings about abortion. When faced with the choice, many women wouldn’t choose abortion for themselves. But the majority of Americans believe that women should have a choice, and they don’t feel that the government–or Bart Stupak– should make that decision for them
An interesting AND BRIEF talk by Economist David Cutler at the 2010 Economic Policy Conference about what a reformed healthcare system might contain. Unfortunately although he can define what a good system would contain, he has no idea how to make it come about. If someone can figure out how to bring about an accountable and high value, efficient system for patients, they will surely become a billionaire!
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/292417-4
NG–
Let’s hope no one becomes a billionaire– we already have enough consultants, middle-men, etc adding to the cost of care.
MedPac (Medicare Payment Advisory Commission) has already figured out how to do it–and epelled it out in hundreds of pages of reports issued in the past few years. Bush ignored the reports.
White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has read and absorbed them.
Execution is something else. But medical centers like Geisinger, Intermountain, Mayo etc. have shown how it can be done.
There is no one way. Different strategies will work in different parts of the country. But we know that we need to replace competition with collaboration, institute guidelines for best practice based on medical evidence, pay providers for value, not volume. (probably salaries with bundled bonuses), and steer both patients and docs away from waste procedures–probably with lower fees and higher co-pays. We also need more shared decision-making for elective surgeries and more palliative care to help patients make decisions at end of life.
Figuring out what to do isn’t so hard. It’s having the will to do it.
There will still be much opposition from patients who believe that more care and more expensive care must always be better care and from providers and man ufactuers who want to see health care spending continue to spiral (so that their profits will spiral)
This opinion piece makes a good case for universal healthcare reform cutting the abortion rate:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031202287.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
‘The cardinal said that there were several reasons but that one important explanation was Britain’s universal health-care system. “If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it’s needed,” Hume explained, “she’s more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn’t it obvious?”
‘A young woman I knew in Britain added another explanation. “If you’re [sexually] active,” she said, “the way to avoid abortion is to avoid pregnancy. Most of us do that with an IUD or a diaphragm. It means going to the doctor. But that’s easy here, because anybody can go to the doctor free.”‘