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January 24, 2005
"Empowering" People into the Grave
Hello, all. I'll be guest-blogging while Zeynep is in Porto Alegre at the World Social Forum. My own blog is Empire Notes. Please check out my new commentary on "The Inauguration, Democracy, and the Iraqi Elections."
A little update from the other white meat, Jeb. While George W. destroys Social Security in order to save it, Jeb is following in big bro's Orwellian footsteps by taking an axe to Medicaid and calling it "empowered care." According to the Times,
Mr. Bush is proposing that the state's 2.1 million MedicaidThis is being billed as a way to control Medicaid costs, which have risen 63% in the past five years. This places a major strain on state budgets, since they have to pay half the costs.
recipients be allotted money to buy their own health care
coverage from managed care organizations and other private
medical networks. If enacted, the program would make
Florida the first state to allow private companies, not the
state, to decide the scope and extent of services to the
elderly, the disabled and the poor, half of them children.
Of course, there are only two ways to reduce the cost. Either reduce the total amount of health care provided (by dropping people from the rolls or keeping people but capping their services) or reduce "overhead." Government health-care programs, naturally, have far less "overhead" than private ones, since they don't need to make a profit. The more services private insurance companies deny to their policyholders, the higher their profits.
Thus, even switching over and keeping the same budget outlays for Medicaid would mean a loss in the amount of health care available to Medicaid holders; actually cutting the budget would mean an even greater loss.
Thus, naturally,
Calling his proposal "empowered care," Governor Bush saidApparently, most states already incorporate "managed care" (managing care down and profits up) into Medicaid, but the Florida empowerment will be the first in which the states put no conditions on private insurance companies profiting off of government largesse.
when he announced it here on Jan. 11 that it would offer
more choice and flexibility to users.
Good thing Jeb has categorically ruled out running for president in 2008. Ever since "Read my lips," we've known how much to trust the family.
Posted by rahul at January 24, 2005 09:08 PM
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Comments
Just arrived in Sao Paolo, dropped in to say hi and check reader suggestions for the WSF. Great fun to check the blog and find new posts!
I think Bush et. al. should rename the language they are using to something other than English...
Posted by: z at January 25, 2005 08:58 AM
"But Iraqis can be forgiven if, after all of this, they understand as little of true democracy as Americans, who don’t seem to have understood that you impeach presidents who lie to get you into an illegal war, you don’t re-elect them." This is what I read when I clicked on your Empire Notes blog for Jan. 24; perhaps I can be forgiven for having little forgiveness for normally astute commentators who ignore the fact that, extrapolating from the 7 p.m. exit polls, Americans voted in record numbers on Nov. 2 to throw Bush out of office by about 2.8 milliion votes, only to have both the election and the knowledge of its theft stolen by Bush's friends' voting machines and a spineless mainstream media. Statisticians with solid credentials who have examined the evidence have told me that Bush's re-election was as close to a statistical impossibility as that condition normally gets. Please stop giving american voters the bad rap they don't deserve!
Posted by: Richard Sevrens at January 25, 2005 10:13 PM