Hey, Harry! I got your private public option right here...The National Medical Licensure Act
His place already assured in the pantheon of the pusillanimous, Harry Reid continues to mock our choice of Senate Majority Leader. (We chose poorly…) His latest demonstration of the “premptive surrender manuever” puts the shiv straight into the heart of health care cost control.
Unless…
Might not the simple expedient of nationalizing medical licensure (thereby obviating the principal objection to co-ops, viz, they are too small and local to effectively hondle the providers) create an environment in which co-ops could function like medicare for all?
Abolish the individual state boards of medical licensure; then *hire the Mayo clinic to work their magic nationally, as a co-operatively owned health maintenance organization.
*Madden adds:”The govt could contract w a private company to administer the public option”.
While it sounds promising in some ways, nationalizing medical licensure is not the panacea you seek. In fact it might be counterproductive.
I am all for a national database of state-licensed physicians to keep doctors who lose their license in one state through malpractice or patient abuse from simply setting up shop under licensure in a new state. But that isn't what we're talking about here.
Medical licensure is best done at the state level for purposes of better oversight and accountability. Making big medicine into BIGGER medicine would not balance out the leverage of state co-ops.
Finally, I can't see how nationalizing medical licensure gets us anywhere close to Medicare for all. What has to be nationalized is insurance, not provider networks. Otherwise, you are simply compounding the profit motive of hospitals.
And no, I don't want to see Mayo become the Wal-Mart of treatment delivery.
August 29, 2009 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't want to see Mayo become the Wal-Mart of treatment delivery.
Why not?
(Wouldn't you love to see Everett Coop in a red jacket greeting you as you come into the hospital??)
I said that a national licensure system would create an environment--not guarantee an outcome.
Presumably, the bureaucratic realities generated by a consumer owned cooperative (perhaps with the adjunct of a "patients union" sitting at the table when collective bargaining is done would be a nice addition) would shift the balance of power away from providers and towards patients.
August 29, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
runs screaming from thread....!
August 29, 2009 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
runs screaming
Well, it's just that he seems to be in the target demographic from which Walmart's prefers to recruit it's "greeters" .
O/T, I believe that the greeters add "value" (that is, produce higher per store sales than without them) to the Walmart team, but I'm damned if I can figure out how it works...
August 30, 2009 12:51 AM | Reply | Permalink