{"id":614,"date":"2009-05-12T18:45:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-12T22:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=614"},"modified":"2009-05-12T18:45:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-12T22:45:00","slug":"health-affairs-blog-lessons-of-medicare-for-the-new-public-health-insurance-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=614","title":{"rendered":"Health Affairs Blog Lessons Of Medicare For The New Public Health Insurance Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/healthaffairs.org\/blog\/2009\/05\/12\/lessons-of-medicare-for-the-new-public-health-insurance-plan\/\">Health Affairs Blog: <\/a><a title=\"Permanent Link: Lessons Of Medicare For The New Public Health Insurance Plan\" href=\"http:\/\/healthaffairs.org\/blog\/2009\/05\/12\/lessons-of-medicare-for-the-new-public-health-insurance-plan\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Lessons Of Medicare For The New Public Health Insurance Plan<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As Congress grapples with whether a new public health insurance plan should be created as part of health care reform, they should take stock of the nation\u2019s experience with Medicare as a public program. Medicare\u2019s strengths and limitations offer a number of lessons for the current debate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>A nice summary of what is right about Medicare, as well as what to avoid (i.e., Medicaid) as we develop a Public Plan.  Quick summary:<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em>1. Medicare is stable and secure. Medicaid is subject to the whims of state governments and is therefore neither.<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em>2. Medicare is nationally uniform, Medicaid, not so much. In fact Medicaid is pretty awful for uniformity and results in rationing of health care in many parts of the country.<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em>3. Transparent and consistent, resulting in lower administration costs, and more predictability for all. But, they argue, and I agree, that congress should not be making the detailed coverage decisions. these should be delegated to an independant board.<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em>4. Provide innovation and leadership in payment reform.<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em>5. Minimizes administrative costs in a variety of ways. I know I can&#8217;t watch a sporting event, television program or anything without seeing my &#8220;not-for-profit&#8221; insurance company logo all over the place. <\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em>6. Public accountability. I always am disbelieving when i hear my conservative friends talk about governement as if it is not us. I reject this, because when we participate, it does work. Of course, the last eight years showed us that the trolley can go off the rails, but we eventually correct.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Health Affairs Blog: Lessons Of Medicare For The New Public Health Insurance Plan: &#8220;As Congress grapples with whether a new public health insurance plan should be created as part of &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=614\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Health Affairs Blog Lessons Of Medicare For The New Public Health Insurance Plan&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicare","category-public-option"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}