--To the extent that I still read some healthcare info sources acquired in connection with a previous employer, yearly double-digit increases in healthcare costs are the number one uncertainity that business frets about. Small independent businesses are actually hit harder by this problem just because the size of their purchasing groups is smaller and they spread the most expensive people in their pool over a smaller number of total subscribers.
--AARP rolled over with big Pharma about cost-containment during the prescription drug debate. Prescription drug costs are going up even faster than overall healthcare costs. Evidence is that these costs are overwhelmingly marketing, with less impact on clinical outcomes, even though prescription drugs are often marketed for their ability to reduce other health care costs.
--SEIU is big in the healthcare business. So whatever happens in business directly afftects the amount of money / resources/ jobs to be bagained over. I suppose different scenarios MIGHT also affect the total number of workers available for recruiting.
In other words everyone is looking out for their own food chain. Where concepts like public health, global best practices, ... fit into the game still definitely remains to be seen.
DoreneC Seattle WA
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 12:56 PM, Dwayne Monroe <dwayne.monroe at gmail.com>wrote:
> Doug posted:
>
>
> [from The Note - will someone ask Andy Stern what he hopes to gain by
> associating with this gang?]
>
> Pressure to move, on healthcare: "Four leading advocacy groups
> representing business, labor and retirees are starting a campaign
> today to press Barack Obama to enact comprehensive healthcare reform,
> upping the pressure on the president-elect to tackle the issue quickly
> after he takes office," Noam M. Levey reports in the Los Angeles
> Times. "In a letter to Obama, the Business Roundtable, the National
> Federation of Independent Businesses, AARP and the Service Employees
> International Union urge that a healthcare overhaul be a priority in
> the administration's first 100 days. The groups plan to spend nearly
> $1 million to publicize their cause in newspaper and television
> advertising in coming weeks."
>
> .........
>
>
>
>
> Unless I miss my guess, here's the group's website:
>
>
> <http://www.aarp.org/issues/dividedwefail/>
>
>
> Note the 'post partisan' (and, we can infer, post political) logo
> which mates the elephant with the ass to create a new, apolitical,
> hybrid creature.
>
>
> This seems perfectly suited to the Obama era: the message is
> attractive -- let's solve our problems together without partisan
> bickering! But the goal is to preserve the existing class
> architecture.
>
> The fantasy of politics without politics, without conflict, is
> fascinating. If the US nurtured a functioning technocratic elite
> --instead of a dysfunctional command strata which tends towards wild
> swings between unbounded enthusiasm and baggy eyed depression -- she
> might be able to sustain this fantasy.
>
>
> For a little awhile.
>
>
>
> The idea that our trouble is argument itself, instead of the genuinely
> conflicting goals of competing class interests (for example, the
> medical industry's desire to squeeze ever more protection money from
> me while providing ever less service vs. my need for decent health
> care) will, I predict, achieve its apogee during President Obama's
> time in office.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> .d.
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>