Final Baucus Hearing Puts Nail In The Coffin

May 13, 2009 (LPAC)—The third and final "roundtable" discussion on "Financing Health Care Reform," led by Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus, was held Tuesday, and had as its major concern the selling of the austerity program, as developed by Peter Whorebag's White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Dartmouth Institute. Present were a gaggle, or better said, a murder (as in crows) of health-care accountants, all operating on the presumption that care would be cut, and that a way must be found to sell this to the population without getting lynched.

All witnesses, and elected officials alike, demonstrated a working knowledge of the Dartmouth Institute's Wennberg study of comparative care, and argued not whether, but how to "level" the health-care financial field. If everyone is to get coverage, then "expectations" have to be lowered — no more freedom of choice on doctors, treatment, etc. Also proposed was a regulatory authority to approve health care, modelled on the British Health Quality Committee, an agency that polices the medical profession and punishes any doctors that give too much medical care—beyond the specified guidelines. Also prominent was a study on "comparitive medicine" by the Kurt Lewin Institute of Social Psychology in the Netherlands.

Euphemisms like "mechanisms to drive costs down," and "bend the cost curve" (a favorite of chairman Baucus) were at a premium as participants "acknowledged" two things: that Medicare (an effective model of government administered privately delivered care) was "old fashioned... out of date," and otherwise "not a usable model," and that now would begin a "transition" period to a new model. None could testify to this better than Gail Wilensky, whose government health-care experience dates back to Bush 41, when she served as head of the Health Care Finance Administration. Wilensky's caution was that we were at a "breakthrough moment," but that the administration needed to "manage expectations" of the public, one of many allusions to the entire behavioral crowd around Larry Summers.

One of the first ideas mentioned, by ranking member Charles Grassley, was that the tax exemptions for charitable and non-profit hospitals be cancelled. Others thought that "life style" taxes—on booze (and fatty foods?)—would be good, or maybe increased deductions or exemptions for low blood pressure or sugar levels. As with many HMOs, the citizenry would be separated into "groups" (overweight, cancer-prone) and health care meted out on that basis. Wilensky lamented "how medicalized are the last six months of life," and also made the point that it was fine and good to make healthy suggestions, but, at some point, the physicians would have to be "disciplined" directly.

At the start of the hearings, the members of the Health Care for All network (of pro HR 676 One Payer activists) staged an intervention, with one after another standing up until they were dragged out. Chairman Baucus offered repeated (paternal?) assurances that "You'll have your say," but, if the tone of this hearing is any guide, it will be a short day, long in the future. The demonstrators are part of a nationwide mobilization for John Conyers' single-payer legislation, that would, in effect, extend Medicare to all Americans and all people living in the United States. This coalition is holding demonstrations in Washington and around the country on May 14, so be on the lookout. It is the public wrath against these paper-pushing genocidalists that is what Baucus was clearly afraid of, in his efforts to propitiate the demonstrators.