Jan 26, 2007

Medicare Changes Coming?

Yahoo News quoted Reuters this morning - seems Mr. Bush is rattling sabres about slowing the growth of Medicare spending, but doesn't have anything concrete to say about the method. I've worked for organizations who do that - and it's frustrating.

Like this...yeah, anytime now, we're going to roll out a brand new fix. And it never happens, or the fix kills the patient.

Here's the Reuters quote:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration will offer specific proposals to slow growth in Medicare spending in its new budget but would not provide specific details, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Friday. The budget for fiscal year 2008 will include a number of "incremental changes" to government health programs, including some to slow the projected 7-percent annual growth in Medicare spending," Paulson told the Journal.

Let's hope the cure isn't worse than the illness. This week in Aging/Grandparents at Suite101.com, we discussed the difficulties of providing care to frail family members and we looked at grief with help from nationally known speaker and author Carol Bradley Bursack, a friend of this section at Suite101.

Join us if you need support or are curious about those issues. The medicare thing - well, that's likely to be ongoing for quite a while. I wouldn't spend much time worrying about it till we see what happens.

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You might find more to interest you about Mr. Bush at Women Day by Day.