POOR, STUPID, HELPLESS:

Ownership society and Medicaid are an unlikely match (Charles Stein, March 20, 2005, Boston Globe)

George Bush wants to create an ownership society -- a place where informed citizens take responsibility for their economic affairs with an assist from the free market. The president hopes to use that formula to overhaul Social Security and maybe Medicare, the health insurer for the elderly. If he succeeds, government will be transformed and Washington will get out from under some huge financial liabilities.

But when it comes to the third big entitlement program, Medicaid, which provides healthcare to the poor, the ownership formula may not work. Government is stuck with the Medicaid problem, in large measure, because the private sector can't or won't shoulder the responsibilities Medicaid has to bear. [...]

[F]or a market to operate, there have to be informed buyers. Medicaid recipients fall into three broad categories: poor people, many of whom lead chaotic lives; disabled people, many of whom suffer from mental impairment; and elderly people, many of whom live in nursing homes. Do these sound like groups that are going to shop for healthcare the way Consumer Reports readers shop for cars?

Medicaid costs certainly aren't beyond our ability to control. Trends that can't be sustained won't be sustained. That is how life works. But John McDonough, executive director of Health Care for All, a Boston advocacy group, is skeptical that the private sector will be an important part of the solution. ''Medicaid takes care of the hardest-to-serve populations," said McDonough. ''These people are in no position to be part of the ownership society."

The Left is rarely this explicit about its contempt for those it supposedly defends.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 20, 2005 10:10 AM