POLITICS: President and Governors Discuss Changes to Medicaid

Monday, President Bush met with the nation's governors in order to discuss increasing Medicaid costs and proposed cuts in Medicaid funding. These cuts would come from preventing states from utilizing accounting practices that enable state governments to receive federal Medicaid funds. President Bush asserts that state governments are exploiting loopholes, and that taxpayers are footing the bill. The nation's governors are opposing the President's budgets cuts; however, they are open to many of the president's proposed reforms. Also, nation's governors said that they are willing to address the issue, but they don't want the costs simply pushed onto the states.



Reform of the Medicaid program is long overdue. Rising costs and patient enrollment threaten to place a severe strain on the system in the future. There are two solutions to the problem that automatically come to mind: increase funding or cut benefits. The problem with these solutions is that they are merely a temporary fix; they only delay having to solve the problem.

Perhaps a better solution is to decrease costs. One way to decrease costs would be to allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada; prescription drugs from Canada are cheaper. Also, the federal and state governments should work to keep healthcare costs low by rolling back the march toward socialized healthcare. Competition within a private healthcare system will make healthcare more affordable and reduce Medicaid enrollments by reducing dependency.

Getting drugs from Canada is cheaper for you, but maybe Canadians are getting sick and tired of being taken advantage of anymore. Fix your own regulations, as in price fixing and limit profits. We don't want your missiles or your sick people getting all our drugs. Fix your own country before trying to make every other country "free".

One of our problems at home with Medicaid is that, the government is not going for the root of the problem, high cost of health insurances, high cost of pharmaceutical drugs and medicines are the culprits, everybody profit from us, and still we have poor people in our country that cannot afford to get sick.

Regulation on drugs and health care is what we need, not drugs imported from Canada, we have our own drugs and medicine here, they should be affordable to everybody.

The sick, poor, old and needy in our nation should be our nation’s priority not the corporations that own and control the health industry.

Our nation is a nation of plenty but for some reason somebody has forgotten the ones that really need help.

I'm wondering where in the world were the county legislatures when all this was going on....I mean, why should the governors be so concerned about the president pushing the costs onto them, when they are just gonna push them onward down to the counties?

The county legislatures should have been outside of the building the meeting was held in, protesting the all!!!

they can pass the buck from now until doomsday, and well, won't help one bit.....the costs are gonna keep rising, and somewhere along the line, tax money will be needed to cover the costs. they're just trying to divert the public anger away from themselves!

they need to get the costs down. And, well, while I agree that the US having some kind of control on themselves with regulations and such is the ultimate answer, I do hope Canada remains patient with us for awhile longer, since some of our states are butting heads with the federal gov't and defying their laws to an extent....
this adds a little more pressure onto the federal government....and drug companies.

god, just get rid of the advertisements, and let's see just how much the costs go down!!

Originally posted by valkeryie
Getting drugs from Canada is cheaper for you, but maybe Canadians are getting sick and tired of being taken advantage of anymore. Fix your own regulations, as in price fixing and limit profits. We don't want your missiles or your sick people getting all our drugs. Fix your own country before trying to make every other country "free".

Dude, that's how capitalism works, you have cheap drugs and a lot of them. Your whole isolationist attitude towards economy would ruin your country in a second. I'm sure your druglords wouldn't mind selling to us.

Originally posted by Jamuhn

Dude, that's how capitalism works, you have cheap drugs and a lot of them. Your whole isolationist attitude towards economy would ruin your country in a second. I'm sure your druglords wouldn't mind selling to us.

The drug companies are p'od. ...They spent a LOT of money lobbying Washington to get their set up. You better believe they don't want it "fixed."


.

Here is more information on how the administration wants to keep things the way there are in favor of the Drug industry and against the US citizens.

More than 100 top regulatory officials represented industry as lobbyists, lawyers... - Denver Post
1. Mon, 24 May 2004
To understand why government policies affecting healthcare, drug safety, food safety and the environment appear to promote industry interests at the expense of public safety and health, the Denver Post has investigated the administration's top regulatory officials (excerpt below). Anne Mulkern found that 100 top government regulators appointed by President Bush are advocates for the industries they are supposed to regulate.
"In at least 20 cases, those former industry advocates have helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry advocates."
Daniel Troy, FDA's chief counsel was a pharmaceutical company litigator who sued the FDA.

No wonder we the people keep losing the battles.

www.ahrp.org...

Originally posted by valkeryie
Getting drugs from Canada is cheaper for you, but maybe Canadians are getting sick and tired of being taken advantage of anymore. Fix your own regulations, as in price fixing and limit profits. We don't want your missiles or your sick people getting all our drugs. Fix your own country before trying to make every other country "free".

your country profits so how are we taking advantage? attitudes like this is why canada is so much weaker in business and economics, you would benefit much if you opened your businesses more to the outside, maybe you wouldnt get ripped off if you raised prices to americans, why havent you? youre basically ripping yourselves off.

Jeez. Medicaids budget has been cut to feed defense contractors...

It's not an international issue. It's domestic.

It amazes me that the federal government only thinks of cutting the funding, or pushing the costs off onto states....and the states only think of cutting services or pushing the costs off onto the federal government or onto people who can't afford to pay any more....

The real problem is the greed of the providers....be they pharmacutical, medical, or some other service provider! They all push and shove to get at the trough and gobble up as much as they can get....to heck with the poor unfortunate souls they are supposed to be helping!

I have lost count of the times I have seen outrageous charges on Medicaid and Medicare statements.....In one instance a physical therapist saw my Mother for less than thirty minutes, only asked her a few questions, and billed the government for $1,700! ( I called the 'fraud hot line' number to report this, and they took my info, but barely seemed interested).

The government is being over charged, and that is what they need to address!

Look at how much this companies spend to keep things in their favor in Capitol hill.

Brand names versus Generic

A look at the brand-name and generic drug companies lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions shows how outgunned the generics drug industry is when it comes to currying favor with the Capitol's lawmakers.
1. In its attempts to influence Congress, the brand-name industry has spent more than $423 million during the last three election cycles while the generic drug industry has spent about $10 million, or 2 percent of what the brand-name industry spent.

Name your prices and we will help you.

www.citizen.org...

[edit on 28-2-2005 by marg6043]

Originally posted by marg6043
Brand names versus Generic

The reason brand names generate so much money is because the most effective drugs have just recently come on the market. It takes 10 years for the generic drug makers to be able to legally make a generic equivalent to a brand. So the brand name drug companies can ask whatever they want for these new, effective drugs and people will pay, or be stuck with older meds that don't offer the results of the new ones. They have no fear of competition for 10 years.

Well, still Generic drugs have to compete in Capitol hill against Brand name pharmaceutical giants.

I am under Tricare Government insurance, is not free, I fall under because my husband is a retired Marine and he has the option of vets’ hospitals or government insurance, one is free the other is not.

I could get my prescriptions free if I buy them in the military base, but, is a problem they never have the medicines I need.

Why? Because Doctors prescribe the latest in the market and the military pharmacy only carry generic and older versions.

So I still have to pay for prescription medicines, with the cuts that Bush is proposing my government insurance will be one of the casualties of "the war on Terror"

Thanks for all the replies

Also, I think that there is somewhat of a stigma toward generic drugs. Some may feel that generic drugs are cheaper, so they are not as good. Such assumptions are completely unwarranted. Generic drugs are exaclty the same as brand name drugs, except with brand name drugs you are paying for the commercials.

Also drug companies are able to get their patents renewed for bogus reasons, locking generic drugs out of the market. Any thoughts about this?

[edit on 3/1/2005 by XX_SicSemperTyrannis_XX]