Tuesday, June 16, 2009
When the White House makes the health care decisions
A bipartisan group of Congressmen have written a letter to President Obama touting the many benefits of medical imaging. They are justifiably concerned, along with (no doubt) radiologists and the manufacturers of CT, PET, and MRI systems, that the wonks in the administration looking for wasteful health care spending will go after imaging. As they no doubt will.
There are at least two interesting things about the letter.
First, this is an expression of the concentration in the White House of power over health care. The lobbying of Congress to preserve or extend reimbursement for one medical procedure or another is nothing new, but the lobbying of the president by Congress is. If you want to protect your business or medical practice in today's brave new world, you need to go to the White House. Expect to see much more of this.
Second, we note with at least some amusement that along with 56 other Members of the House, erstwhile libertarian and small government gadfly Ron Paul signed the letter. One might easily have thought it would be against his principles to petition the president to preserve federal spending spending for a particular social welfare benefit.
2 Comments:
By 
joated, at
Tue Jun 16, 09:01:00 PM:
Just who the heck actually is entitled to, you know, write legislation anyway? Not to mention who must pass the stuff before the president can even sign it? Why the heck are they lobbying the tpresident about the contents of a bill they must write and pass?
Yeah, the whole thing will be a disaster if it ever does happen.
By Viking Kaj, at
Wed Jun 17, 11:23:00 AM:
GE and Siemens are happy.
As long as someone else's ox get's gored...
