National Health Care

With all the talk about health care I just could not resist the urge to put up my favorite picture of Dear Leader that my good friend Mike Church designed. I am afraid we have started down the road of no return. It has been 100 days of Dear Leaders rule and already the insurance companies are running to the table with deals to prevent their demise. Good Luck people.

In a rare move before the Obama administration has unveiled the details of its own health care overhaul, industry groups are offering to reduce the costs of coverage for all Americans in the hopes of staving off legislation that would restrict their profitability in future years.

Leaders of the health care industry have offered $2 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years. The goal is to make insurance more affordable so the government does not create a system to enroll middle-class workers and their families that directly competes with the health care industry.

Under a government system, drug makers worry that in the future, new medications might have to pass a cost-benefit test before they can win approval. And hospitals and doctors are concerned the government could dictate what they get paid to care for any patient, not only the elderly and the poor.

Representatives of industry and provider groups have been invited to the White House Monday. Many of them were part of a health care summit held at the White House in March.

The groups attending Monday include the American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, Pharma, AdvaMed, America's Health Insurance Plans, SEIU, the Greater New York hospital association and the California Hospital association.

"We cannot continue down the same dangerous road we've been traveling for so many years, with costs that are out of control, because reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait," Obama said in prepared remarks the White House released Sunday.

"That is why these groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment."

The groups concede that their prices are not going down, they are merely slowing the rate of growth. But economists say the move would create breathing room to help provide health insurance to an estimated 50 million Americans who now go without it.

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