"Global" health care spending caps-the push ramps up

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The clumsy, global health care spending caps enacted in Massachusetts is a harbinger of what the medical planning elites are pushing for the whole country. Global should be in scare quotes because it does not mean the entire world- just the US in regard to both pubic and private health care spending.

Let that sink in, the elite class wants to control how much everyone can spend on health care. This is central economic planning much more restrictive and coercive than what ACA has in store for roughly 1/6 of the US economy. I use the adjective clumsy because the Mass Plan does not have real teeth to enforce spending caps on the total amount spent on health care . A federal plan even it is nominally executed via numerous individual state plans will not make that mistake.

Dr Paul Hsieh talks about an article in the September 6,2012 issue of NEJM written by an all star team of proponents of central control. See here for his commentary. Here is one quote from the NEJM article :


"We recommend that an independent council composed
providers,payers,businesses,consumers and economists set and enforce the spending targets."

Folks associated with the Center for American Progress are well represented in the article's 23 authors (the Center sponsored the gathering of "health-policy experts) as are folks who have worked with the Obama and Clinton administrations. Peter Orszag,now with Citigroup, and Ezekiel Emanuel both played roles in the health planning of the Obama administration. The former president of the SEIU contributed as well as did Tom Daschle

Uwe Reinhardt was also a contributor and his affiliation on the print version of the article listed Princeton as an employer but his roles on the boards of Boston Scientific and Amerigroup Corp and as a trustee of Q Capital Management were not. However, those positions were designated on the ICMJE form which can be accessed via the online version of the article.There we learned that Dr. Reinhardt received stock and stock options from those organizations. I mention Reinhardt particularly because this is not the first time his paid associations with health care related companies does not appear on the print version of articles and commentaries to which he has contributed. Dr Roy Poses has been tireless in his efforts to point out various conflicts of interests in those who hold themselves out to be health care experts.See here for one of Poses's posting regarding COI s and Dr. Reinhardt.

Left unsaid was how the spending targets would be enforced.