Modern Healthcare
November 5, 2001
Washington Report
by Jonathan Gardner
“To help lure investors to healthcare, the Bush administration wants to make providing Medicare services a stable and moderately profitable business. The trouble is, it’s Congress, not the administration, that turns Medicare’s financial spigot on and off.
“Thomas Scully, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says the boom-bust cycle in Medicare payments scares Wall Street away from the healthcare sector.
“So now he’s proposing a different approach to give investors in the stock and bond markets more confidence in investing in healthcare providers and companies.”
Bill Reiland, a principal with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter who runs high-yield healthcare research:
“`He (Scully) probably has a good intention and has a good objective, and I’m sure healthcare providers around the country rise up and cheer when he says that. The important question is, in five years will the administration have the same objectives? You don’t know. You might not have the same administration.”
Comment: Let us pray.
Sorry. I had intended to avoid political comments, believing that we all need to work together. But when Thomas Scully is more worried about the health of the health plans than he is about the health of the people of this nation, it is political.