State of the Union: Pass Me the Tums
It started out okay…a few bones thrown toward immigration reform and energy initiatives. By the end, my stomach was in knots.
Did I hear Bush right when he said he wanted to authorize mercenaries? Well, he didn’t call them mercenaries, but look at the text of what he said:
A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.
Now “civilians with critical skills” could be people with medical, mechanical or technical expertise. Pilots, doctors, nurses, EMTs. But it could also mean other types of expertise, and that falls into my definition of a mercenary.
On other topics, this one struck me as the most absurd:
We need to expand Health Savings Accounts … help small businesses through Association Health Plans … reduce costs and medical errors with better information technology … encourage price transparency … and protect good doctors from junk lawsuits by passing medical liability reform. And in all we do, we must remember that the best health care decisions are made not by government and insurance companies, but by patients and their doctors.
As to the expansion of HSAs — studies are showing that most employees do not feel that they are benefiting from HSAs. HSAs are a way for employers to shift the burden for the cost of health insurance onto the employee, and most employees do not feel that they have the knowledge or the tools at hand to properly allocate the meager funds allowed into a Health Savings Account.
As for the other platitudes about patients and doctors, let’s just call that for the BS that it is. Bush is a great crony of the Caremark directorate which makes millions getting between patients and their doctors. There is much to be done with the healthcare system, but throwing tax credits and deductions at the problem is NOT the solution.
There’s much more, but I was left with such a case of indigestion after listening, and so stressed that I haven’t really organized my thoughts very well.
Technorati Tags: Bush, State of the Union, Iraq, healthcare, HSA