Linkmeister

Hopeful but skeptical

Updated below

Good news?

A range of leading health-care providers joined President Barack Obama on Monday in announcing their promise to sharply reduce the growth of national health spending, a move that could ease the path toward his goal of comprehensive coverage for Americans.

Well, maybe. Pardon me for not trusting the medico-insurance industrial complex very much. I think they're running scared and trying to get out ahead of any public plan that might be proposed in the future.

Nonetheless, $2 trillion bucks in cost-cutting over ten years is nothing to sneeze at. So we'll see.

Update: It's not often I agree with a Time magazine columnist, but here's Karen Tumulty at Swampland:

the health industry wants reform--at least, it wants it on their terms. That's because universal coverage means 47 million new customers who can actually pay their bills. Assuming, of course, that private insurers are not competing with a Medicare-like, government-financed "public plan." The non-partisan Lewin Group has estimated that, given that option, more than 130 million Americans would enroll in a government plan -- which private insurers say would effectively kill their own business model. Heading off a public plan is what is implicit in this gesture the health industry is making this morning.

Posted by Linkmeister at May 11, 2009 12:03 PM | TrackBack