Gene Nichol, who heads a group that is the offspring of John Edwards’ presidential campaign, wrote in the Raleigh News & Observer yesterday about an eight-day free clinic in Los Angeles put on by Remote Area Medical. Nichol claimed the response to the clinic showed the need for health care reform. He is right, but not in the way he meant.
A Tennessee-based private organization takes care of people such as Elizabeth Simms who were dropped from California’s Medicaid system and Gene Nichol sees this as a reason to expand government control of health care.
The Democratic General Assembly and Democratic governor in North Carolina cut 75 jobs from an understaffed state mental health system where people have died from neglect and abuse. Their budget also cut payments to doctors who take Medicaid patients; small wonder that more doctors drop Medicare and Medicaid patients every year. Maine cut care to save money in its public option. Canadians go to Michigan for hospital treatment. Newborn babies go to Buffalo, NY, because there are no available neonatal intensive care unit beds in the entire province of Ontario, Canada. All this and more from beneficent governments, yet Nichol would have a 1,000 page bill that kills competition and puts more people depend on someone else to pay the bill and make decisions about the care they deserve. Exactly who is anti-health care?
Nichol actually found part of the problem but failed to recognize it when Stan Brock said it: “We tried to get a waiver to bring in good ol’ East Tennessee boys and girls to do eyes and teeth, but they won’t allow practitioners from one state to cross over and help in another.” Let’s make it easier for patients, insurers, and providers to cross state lines — it doesn’t require 1,000 pages or a government takeover.
