http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26brooks.html?hp
Some of us hoped that by reforming his party, which has grown so unpopular, McCain could prove that he could reform the country.....
In some sense this whole campaign was a contest to see which party could reach out from its base and occupy that centrist ground. The Democratic Party did that. Senior Democrats like Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Jason Furman actually created something called The Hamilton Project to lay out a Hamiltonian approach for our day. McCain and Republicans stayed within their lines. There was a lot of talk about earmarks. There was a good health care plan that was never fully explained. And there was Sarah Palin, who represents the old resentments and the narrow appeal of conventional Republicanism.
For those interested, the total number of articles Brooks wrote about the McCain health plan was zero. That's one less than the one he wrote fully explaining Hillary's single payer system...
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/opinion/18brooks.html
But let's go to the Hamlton project that lays out that Hamiltonian approach Brooks and other pastel Republicans hunger for. Medicare in particular.
Here's what the "centrists" have in mind for the Medicare prescription drug benefit according to
"To encourage price competition and discourage adverse selection, Medicare should allow competition for exclusive contracts to sell the standardized plans in each Part D region. To address the stresses on the federal budget, prices paid for drugs purchased on behalf of beneficiaries previously covered by Medicaid should be reduced to near their former Medicaid levels. To limit the ability of manufacturers to name their prices of therapeutically unique drugs, a standby mechanism for establishing temporary administered prices should be developed."
If you go through the position paper, Frank and Newhouse, two smart people who know better in my opinion, recommend price controls on breakthrough drugs based on the same approach taken by NICE in England. And they would give one drug benefit management firm the right to sell "standardized" plans to by region. That's a backdoor for a national drug formulary and robbing seniors of choice. They argue such a change is needed to encourage price competition, but how will reducing the number of plans increase competition? As for adverse selection, are Frank and Newhouse blind to the emergence of tools to drive patients to the right drug based on clinical and genetic criteria. As Mark McClellan has noted http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/04useconomics_frank.aspx
Some of us hoped that by reforming his party, which has grown so unpopular, McCain could prove that he could reform the country.....
In some sense this whole campaign was a contest to see which party could reach out from its base and occupy that centrist ground. The Democratic Party did that. Senior Democrats like Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Jason Furman actually created something called The Hamilton Project to lay out a Hamiltonian approach for our day. McCain and Republicans stayed within their lines. There was a lot of talk about earmarks. There was a good health care plan that was never fully explained. And there was Sarah Palin, who represents the old resentments and the narrow appeal of conventional Republicanism.
For those interested, the total number of articles Brooks wrote about the McCain health plan was zero. That's one less than the one he wrote fully explaining Hillary's single payer system...
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/opinion/18brooks.html
But let's go to the Hamlton project that lays out that Hamiltonian approach Brooks and other pastel Republicans hunger for. Medicare in particular.
Here's what the "centrists" have in mind for the Medicare prescription drug benefit according to
"To encourage price competition and discourage adverse selection, Medicare should allow competition for exclusive contracts to sell the standardized plans in each Part D region. To address the stresses on the federal budget, prices paid for drugs purchased on behalf of beneficiaries previously covered by Medicaid should be reduced to near their former Medicaid levels. To limit the ability of manufacturers to name their prices of therapeutically unique drugs, a standby mechanism for establishing temporary administered prices should be developed."
If you go through the position paper, Frank and Newhouse, two smart people who know better in my opinion, recommend price controls on breakthrough drugs based on the same approach taken by NICE in England. And they would give one drug benefit management firm the right to sell "standardized" plans to by region. That's a backdoor for a national drug formulary and robbing seniors of choice. They argue such a change is needed to encourage price competition, but how will reducing the number of plans increase competition? As for adverse selection, are Frank and Newhouse blind to the emergence of tools to drive patients to the right drug based on clinical and genetic criteria. As Mark McClellan has noted http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/04useconomics_frank.aspx
