NYT Admits Conservatives Are Right About Government Healthcare

posted at 8:50 am on February 19, 2010 by Laura Curtis
[ Healthcare ]   

In contrast to their editorials supporting the expansion of Medicaid, this NYT article unwittingly supports several key conservative arguments against government health care:

We’re already at the breaking point, and the nation cannot afford for the Democrats to add more people to the government health care rolls:

Facing relentless fiscal pressure and exploding demand for government health care, virtually every state is making or considering substantial cuts in Medicaid, even as Democrats push to add 15 million people to the rolls.

It’s unfair to doctors.  If we push them too far they will opt out of the system:

The Medicaid program already pays doctors and hospitals at levels well below those of Medicare and private insurance, and often below actual costs. Large numbers of doctors, therefore, do not accept Medicaid patients, and cuts may further discourage participation in the program, which primarily serves low-income children, disabled adults and nursing home residents.

… Dr. Beck said that over eight months last year, his practice wrote off $36,000 in losses from treating 17 Medicaid patients. The state-imposed payment cut, he said, was “the final straw.”

“I’m out, I’m done,” Dr. Beck said in a telephone interview. “I didn’t want to. I want to take care of people. But I also have three children and many employees to take care of.”

It will result in rationing services:

Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, is proposing the largest cuts in the history of TennCare, his state’s Medicaid program. To trim 9 percent of the TennCare budget, he would establish a $10,000 cap on inpatient hospital services for nonpregnant adults and would limit coverage of X-rays, laboratory services and doctor’s office visits.

What’s missing from the article: the typical “Obamacare will cure all our ills” gloss over the very real problems with health care delivery by the government.  Even better, it once again puts the lie to the concept of “free health care.”  No matter who delivers it, health care costs money and it is a limited resource.  While the insurance companies are demonized for denying claims, Medicare denies them at nearly double the average of private insurers:

The number of Democrats pushing for the public option is growing, but now is not the time to compromise on fighting for the real reforms proposed by the GOP.  Newt Gingrich may be feeling hopeful that the President will work in an open, bipartisan manner on new legislation” but Obama will not change his stance.  He’s said it repeatedly: he wants single payer.  And many on the left have openly admitted that the public option is the path to single payer.

If Democrats want to ram it through – and it seems they do – in spite of the facts that even the New York Times is now reporting, then let them do it without the cover of bipartisanship.

Crossposted.

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