To give you an idea of what I'm looking for, following my signature is a sample of the argument from a person I'm talking to.
Thanks, --BD
********************************************************************** Medicare-with its 110,000 pages of regulations, guidelines, rules, laws, related paperwork, and 800 million claims a year-is too complicated to manage and is going broke. Medicare should be redesigned to resemble the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP). FEHBP uses more than 280 private health insurers that compete for the business of individual employees, keeping costs down while maintaining quality. The $12.6 billion in Medicare fraud, as identified by the Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general, must be reduced in a manner that does not criminalize inadvertent paperwork errors. If left unchanged, Medicare will consume far too much of our children's incomes by doubling the current payroll tax for Medicare and Social Security. Medicare needs to change slowly to a "cohort-based" system so that each generation pays for itself and doesn't rely on its children to foot the bill. Any savings under a FEHBP-style plan would be budget neutral in the first four years, with an initial savings of $6 billion starting in the fifth year, then exceeding $100 billion over ten years. Prescription drug coverage should be provided as part of overall Medicare reform.
The Public Health Service will spend $212 million in subsidies to institutions for educating physicians, nurses, and public health professionals. The money is generally distributed via contracts to schools and grants to schools and hospitals for designated health profession training. Primary care and community-based training gets the lion's share of funding at $146 million, while nursing education receives approximately $66 million. According to CBO, "the number of physicians - the principal health profession targeted by the subsidies - has rapidly increased, rising from 142 physicians in all fields for every 100,000 people in 1960 to 278 in 1996." Market forces should determine the incentive for people pursuing training and jobs in the health profession. **************************************************************************