Word: pocketing
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...these problems, only those uninitated to Republican antics in the House are amazed at this point that the bill in question managed to pass. As the Republican revolution gets routinized as politics as usual, the story is all too familiar by now. House Commerce Chair Bliley was in the pocket of long-distance carriers like AT&T, and he looked to aid them by permitting only the Baby Bells to enter long-distance markets after long-distance carriers got a chance to establish themselves locally...
...medication is particularly expensive. "A physician and patient can argue with the insurer," says Dr. Howard Ozer, director of the Winship Cancer Center at Emory University in Atlanta. "But if it goes on for too long and the patient can't pay for the drug out of his own pocket, he can die before the approval can be obtained...
...there's some thing big happening that I want to talk to you about--but not here. Do you have a business card?" I regretted that I did not. "Give me your phone number anyway." I searched around for a piece of paper, but all I had in my pocket was a blank check. I turned it over and wrote my phone number on the back. "I've got to go now--but I'll be in touch," she rasped, leaving the brown-stone. In an effort to gain a favor for my consultant friends, I had just given...
...long-term nursing-home care. In fact, despite the government's projected $181 billion cost for Medicare this year, seniors today spend more, in real terms, on health care annually than they did before Medicare started in 1965. Most important, shifting the cost of health care from one pocket to another--from the government to seniors themselves--doesn't address the central problem, which is the rising cost of health care generally. That is why serious Medicare reform must involve constraining costs in the best way anyone has yet discovered: through market forces...
...there are problems too. As mentioned, there are limits on people's ability and inclination to be rational consumers when it comes to health care. Furthermore, the worst health-care inflation is occurring in big-ticket items, such as major surgery, which cost more than the annual out-of-pocket threshold. The big savings to the government would come not from any triumph of market-based efficiency but simply from making seniors pay more of the cost. And the government would lose some of that money again if, as proposed, people are encouraged to set up tax-free "Medisave" accounts...