The 48 Hour Alternative
August 19, 2009
At the risk of being accused of beating a dead horse, I must again give advice to President Obama about healthcare. It is, ironically, the same advice I have suggested to my medical association for exactly eighteen years.
Save Medicare and people will be grateful, more trusting and help to save the medical profession from malpractice and tort abuse. Save Medicare, Mr. Obama, and 45 million American Seniors and countless others will believe that you can rescue a government/ public option from a corrupt House and Senate.
My advice: The 48 hour alternative: call Rahm Emanuel, sir, and have him contact Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Give them 48 hours to announce that they will be sponsoring House and Senate bills to include “competitive bidding” in all phases of Medicare, including Laboratories, Durable Goods, Oxygen and Pharmaceuticals, using the entire Medicare population for leverage! (Instantaneous 50% to 300% cuts in expenditures.)
The alternative, of course, is that if they do not have this press conference, then the President will have his own, in which, he will announce that he has asked Pelosi and Reid to do this and they have refused, possibly and mercifully, ending their careers.
I personally believe that the public option is an excellent concept on paper and a very necessary step in creating some sort of comprehensive national health care. Besides giving people better access to affordable health care, more importantly, comprehensive national health care is the only way to save business and industry or the U.S. will never again be able to compete with other countries. That is what really makes health care the most important issue in this country.
Like the majority of Americans, I believe that the Congress, House and Senate, without Tom Daschle and Bush’s ex-Secretary Leavitt, are far too incompetent and corrupt to design even a headstone for a dead dog. President Obama, himself, will need to meet with Daschle, Howard Dean and ex Secretary Leavitt and eventually with insurers. He needs to become a virtual expert in healthcare to prepare and pass a meaningful healthcare bill (the easy part) and make the bureaucracy work (the hardest part).
Allen Finkelstein, D.O.