HEALTHCARE: French Battle Gaping Healthcare Deficits

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

PARIS (Reuters) - The French government is looking at ways to plug a gaping hole in its health care budget and may charge patients more for hospital stays, Budget Minister Eric Woerth said on Monday.

France's health system is largely financed by the state and has been hailed as the best in the world by the World Health Organization. It is also one of the most costly and the government constantly struggles to control spending.

After a 4.4 billion euro ($6.31 billion) shortfall in the health budget in 2008, Woerth said he expected the deficit to hit 10 billion euros this year and 15 billion next, with the economic downturn denting social security contributions.

"We were not far from balancing the social security books and now, with the economic (crisis) ... the deficit is taking off again," Woerth said, adding that the government would address the problem in the 2010 budget.

"We need to make savings of around 2-1/5 billion (euros) to prevent the trend for higher spending from becoming too strong."

The press reported that amongst the options under review were to increase the daily charge for hospital stays to 20 euros from 16 euros and to cut reimbursement for some over-the-counter drugs like aspirin to 15 percent from 35 percent.

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5863CN20090907

[djones520]

Public Options DOA I believe.  America has spoken, and the Congress critters afraid for their cushy jobs has listened.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Public Options DOA I believe.  America has spoken, and the Congress critters afraid for their cushy jobs has listened.

Which is bad news if the Blue Dogs and RINOs consider that palliative enough to pass something that taxes those with benes of quintuple MedicAid to become a siphoning black hole that drags the rest of us into the system public option notwithstanding.

We could very easily win this battle only to see the larger war lost.

[thundley4]

Public Options DOA I believe.  America has spoken, and the Congress critters afraid for their cushy jobs has listened.

I hope you're right, but I think they'll do an end run with the "trigger" option. Thomas Sowell had a good point about health insurance reform.

One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!

Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?

If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election?

TownHall

[djones520]

All the pundits on Fox seemed to pretty much agree last night that the senate won't cave on this.  The house will pass a bill with the Public Option, but the Senate won't.  I'm inclined to agree with them.  The House Dems can afford to lose a few seats.  The Senate can't.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

All the pundits on Fox seemed to pretty much agree last night that the senate won't cave on this.  The house will pass a bill with the Public Option, but the Senate won't.  I'm inclined to agree with them.  The House Dems can afford to lose a few seats.  The Senate can't.

But whose to say they won't sneak it into the reconciliation bill and blame the House while snickering at their cleverness?