Lack of Medicare Chief Is a Strike Against Reform

[Randall Flagg]

Source: New York Times

The White House will offer plenty of reasons for the delay: the derailment of Tom Daschle’s candidacy as White House health adviser, the nitpicky nature of the Senate confirmation process, the likelihood that Republicans would use any nomination to slow health reform.

But consider what the next head of Medicare — officially, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — will be facing whenever he or she is finally named. First will come that confirmation process. Then the person will have to learn the workings of an agency that oversees a budget $200 billion larger than the Pentagon’s. And finally there will be the small matter of helping to oversee big chunks of the most ambitious domestic policy legislation in decades.

Health reform is not merely a matter of passing a bill, hard as that has been (and may still be); its success will also depend on how that bill is put into action. As Jon Kingsdale, who oversees the universal coverage plan in Massachusetts, says: “Implementing health reform in Massachusetts was not easy. The federal legislation is far, far more challenging and ambitious.”

(snip)

Does all this mean that reform isn’t worth doing? Absolutely not. The health system is badly in need of an overhaul. Medical costs are taking a huge bite out of workers’ paychecks. Those costs are growing at a rate that will overwhelm the federal budget. Yet the quality of treatment is spotty, and the United States is the only wealthy country in the world with large numbers of uninsured.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/business/economy/13leonhardt.html

[cornermouse]

1. Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!!!!!!

Health insurance giveaway...err...Healthcare reform down! On to doing the same thing to Medicare and apparently using the Massachusetts for a pattern! Yes! Yes! Yes!