http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114109255909784910-Hdvl_PjgjJvKiWpE2ExUtK1xyl0_20070227.html?mod=public_home_us_inside_todayWASHINGTON -- President Bush's "ownership society" is coming to one corner of Medicare: Live long enough, and a patient could have his or her own oxygen equipment and hospital-style bed at home.
Congress paved the way this month with a budget bill mandating a "rent-to-own" rule requiring that Medicare home-care beneficiaries take title to their rented beds after 13 months. Now, Mr. Bush wants to apply the same standard to oxygen equipment in hopes of saving billions of dollars and empowering the elderly to bargain for cheaper respiratory-therapy services.
The administration contends that the rental payments now are a waste of scarce government funds, and that the situation has reached a point where relationships must be altered. Instead of renting, Medicare would in effect buy the equipment for a beneficiary, who then could bargain for services -- oxygen supplies and maintenance -- separately on the basis of service and price.
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"Republican delusions that health care can work like any other market apparently know no bounds," says Robert Berenson, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a top Medicare administrator under President Clinton. "They now even extend their notions of an ownership society to people in their last months of life."
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Sure you may not have long to live...But you can OWN your oxygen equipment now. Pass it on to love ones. But you still have to rent the oxygen. :crazy: