Does Bill Frist Have a Stake In the Stupid New Medicaid Bill?
Senate majority leader Bill Frist’s household stake in HCA, his family’s hospital chain, is $26,000,000. –Physicians for a National Health Program (Chicago) (here) Bad Medicine From Harper’s Magazine, February 2004 (here) Although the government must provide drugs to 40 million people, it may not negotiate a bulk discount; it must pay whatever price the manufacturer sets or asks prices that in the recent past have been rising at a rate of 12 percent a year. The legislation forbids the importing of less expensive drugs from Canada, prohibits beneficiaries from buying supplemental insurance for drugs unacknowledged by Medicare, reduces or eliminates payments to as many as 6 million people for whom Medicaid now defrays at least some of their prescription costs, declares a suspension of payment at precisely the point when most people might need the most help. An annual premium of $420 covers 75 percent of drug expenditures up to $2,250; from that point upward the beneficiary must pay, wit
