Posted on 02/29/2008 2:48:20 PM PST by greyfoxx39
Bill Richardson slipped off of the national radar screen back in January when he abandoned his bid for president. While he eagerly awaits the outcome of the Clinton-Obama battle for the Democratic nomination — and perhaps a phone call inviting him to join a ticket in the vice-presidential slot or take a cabinet slot down the road — Richardson has been stuck in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the mundane (at least for him) role of governor.
Richardson will not have the chance to fulfill his presidential campaign promise of “universal health coverage.” But since abandoning his bid for the presidency he has used New Mexico as a testing ground for public acceptance of government-run health care. Let’s just say his experiment failed on the launch pad.
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It became apparent right from the start that Richardson’s people had not done their homework. The consulting firm Mathematica Policy Research was hired to study the state’s health-care proposal. (It had previously done such work for Maine’s Dirigo program, drastically underestimating the costs.) The problem was, Mathematica’s numbers proved to be phony.
Before the state’s legislative session even got under way, Mathematica’s estimated price tag for Richardson’s proposal over a five-year period was magically reduced from $333 million to about $72 million. The firm blamed a computer error for the original, inflated estimate. But given the track record of such approximations, it is likely that even the $333 million figure is an underestimate of the true cost of the governor’s proposal.
And what did that proposal include? First and foremost, it targeted doctors for significant cost savings by forcing anyone practicing medicine in New Mexico to prescribe whatever care the state or health-insurance companies deemed adequate. While such a move may appear logical to those who believe government is the font of all wisdom, the reality is that doctors — already scarce in the state’s rural areas — would flee New Mexico in droves if they became the target of ever-increasing demands for cost-savings.
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Ultimately, Richardson could not get his plan through either house of the Democrat-dominated New Mexico legislature, at least during the regular session. As the legislative session ended, Richardson again lashed out, saying the session was the “worst in his term as governor” and accusing legislators of “lacking the political will to address health care.”
Richardson’s defeat was due in part to genuine policy disagreements. But another factor that cannot be understated is the widespread perception of Richardson as a “lame duck.” The assumption is that he is simply biding his time in New Mexico until Clinton or Obama tap him for a job in Washington.
The governor and Senate leaders met for about an hour and a half at the Capitol on Thursday and agreed to create a bipartisan, executive-legislative group to discuss what to reform and make sure everyone agrees to the changes before a special session some time this summer, the Journal reported.
"We all want a productive special session that results in affordable access to health care," a far less bellicose-sounding Richardson said in a news release."
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Good catch!!
put me on the NM ping list...thanks!
Done, and welcome. Dave please add to your copy.
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