"Obama's Health Care Will Make It Worse"

Says Robert Samuelson, at WaPo, stating what's obvious to all but the partisan agenda hacks and their knee-jerks.

Noteworthy:

" 'You'd be adding a third medical entitlement on top of Medicare and Medicaid,' says James Capretta, a top official at the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004."

...and:

"We should move toward coordinated care networks that take responsibility for their members' medical needs in return for fixed annual payments (called 'capitation'). One approach is through vouchers; Medicare recipients would receive a fixed amount and shop for networks with the lowest cost and highest quality. Alternatively, government could shift its reimbursement of hospitals and doctors to 'capitation' payments. Limited dollars would, in theory, force improvements in efficiency and effective care.

We're not having this debate. To engage it would require genuine presidential leadership, because, admittedly, these proposals would be hugely controversial. Medicare recipients -- present and future -- would feel threatened. Existing doctor-patient relationships might be disrupted. Spending limits would inspire fears of short-changed care. Hospitals, doctors and device manufacturers would object. Obama took a pass. He simply claims that his plan will do things it won't. What he's offering is an enlarged version of the status quo that, as he says, is already unsustainable."

You may not be aware of it, but what Samuelson advocates in the last except is virtually the same thing as the Medicare Advantage program in its application. Medicare Advantage is the program the "Regressives" are trying to force out of existence because it threatens the essence of universal health care, the professed outcome of the leading punks of the Obamacare conspiracy.

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