Conrad, a consistent opponent of the public option, wanted liberals to know "government-run programs" aren't necessary to lower costs and expand access. He explained that he'd finished reading T.R. Reid's "The Healing of America" over the weekend, and learned Germany, Japan, Switzerland, France, and Belgium are doing just fine. "[A]ll of them contain costs, have universal coverage, have very high quality care and yet are not government-run systems."
What? After 22 years in the Senate this is the great paradigm-changing insight you give us? The upshot of this discussion seems to be that the "government option" will be an expansion of low reimbursement Medicaid to the lower working class while allowing private insurance companies will continue to cherry pick the health and wealthy
>> A boon to the insurance industry and the Senators and Congressmen who they own, and a disaster for medical practice, taxpayers, physicians and patients.... just my cynical hunch.
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I'd say that Conrad needs remedial reading classes, focusing on improving his reading comprehension. Because if that was his conclusion from reading anything written by T.R. Reid on health care systems around the world, then he decidedly missed the author's main point (not to mention assorted "minor" issues such as the fact that many of those countries indeed have public health systems in place, and functioning very well at that; and that none of them have an unregulated for-profit set-up for private insurance companies, if those exist).
It's pathetic that people like Conrad (and Baucus and the whole gang of them) have the power to decide matters of our life and death.
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