The Latest White House Brain Child: Privatizing Medicare

Apparently the White House didn't get rebuked by the public sharply enough for its plan to privatize Social Security. Now it appears the Bush administration is looking into partially privatizing Medicare.

This is from today's FierceHealthcare newsletter:

"In an interview, [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] head Mark McClellan said the White House is looking at extending the system of health savings accounts to Medicare. Adding private accounts to the current system, of course, would amount to a fundamental change to the government health program for the elderly and disabled and is likely to spark opposition from groups opposed to privatization and taxpayers who can do basic math and are concerned about the program's costs."

An article from the San Diego Union Tribune has more on the McClellan interview.

The more the Bush administration continues to ignore ideas that would truly have a positive impact on the key health care issues in the US--cost and the number of uninsured--the more polls are going to show, as a Wall Street Journal one did yesterday, that the vast majority of Americans (75% in the WSJ poll) lack confidence in the current White House to effectively reform the healthcare system.