Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Care – Anybody Care?, Pt.3 – Tied up in “nots”

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The apparent Republican stance seems to be tied in ‘nots’: “not our voters, not our kind of solution and not our priority,” as Mr. Millenson explains. There is not even a pretense of universal health insurance coverage. Universal health insurance is neither desirable to McCain nor his voters. The only vestige might have been Mitt Romney, then, Governor of Massachusetts if only he hadn’t disowned his own “ground-breaking” achievement toward universal health insurance in the end. A little surprising, considering the gratitude he must have received from the medical industry for filling their coffers with all those unsolicited new customers. Now the doctors are crying because they have too much business. Mr. Millenson gives some credit to the Democrats, but then attacks them for not going all the way. I’m not confident of the wisdom in going straight for the jugular when a candidate is still 100 miles away from the throat of the target, which is already on the defense. The American public could not digest an abrupt collapse of it’s current insurance nor would they favor hearing about a bunch of new taxes, when considering McCain’s presumptive tax give-away. There is no magic wand.

Mr. Millenson gives some leeway to the politicians for falling down on universal health insurance, however by addressing the interest groups. “Interest” groups speaks of narrow focus, of course, and Mr. Millenson is dismayed there are so few of any size that are narrowly focused on universal health insurance reform. He mentions the AARP who are very powerful and are making strides, but criticizes the vagueness and off-skew focus. One miff was the triple-digit billion-dollar awarded by Congress for a pharmaceutical benefit for Medicare.

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