MEMPHIS, TN- In what was originally hailed as "a brilliant final soulution to Tennessee's health insurance crisis" by retired Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, Washington lawmakers have adopted Thompson's Final Solution, as it is being called, and plan on rolling it out on a national scale as soon as possible.
The Final Solution, as drafted by Thompson, calls for all uninsured Tennesseans to be "hunted down and killed by any means necessary." The state, will however, provide a can of gasoline and two matches to immolate the bodies to the closest relative or legal guardian.
"This is really the only way," said Thompson. "And it's really an elegant solution. Just look at all the Fortune 100 Companies cutting back to save costs. We just took that as inspiration but also took it step further."
The state's proposal to control the rising costs of health care for the poor by killing them has provoked alarm
among national advocacy groups, which have warned for weeks now that this Final Solution in Tennessee could spread elsewhere.
Alan Gilbert, Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, weighed in on the expansion of the Tennessee initiative. "Yeah, see, Tennessee tried bold new limits on prescriptions, doctor visits and medical treatments, but they just didn't cut it. Why bother saving ten or twenty percent when you can save one hundred percent. This is truly visionary and a win-win."
States from Florida to California were considering ways to contain huge and growing expenses for Medicaid, a shared state-federal program that provides care for the poorest Americans. Health care for the poor had become the most rapidly increasing cost for many states reeling from budget shortfalls during the last three years. Some have saved money by scaling back the number of people who qualify. But if this bill becomes a law, all of those problems will become a thing of the past.
President Bush visited the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, to highlight his new plan to help all Americans by "simply eliminating those unable to pull their wieght." He was going to propose ways for them to gain access to affordable, high-quality health care.
"Rising health care costs impose a burden on families and small businesses and put health insurance coverage out of the reach of many Americans," he said at press conference there before heading back to his Crawford Ranch to chop pre-scored logs. "See, in Texas, we call it thinnin' the herd. That's just the way of nature. It's God's way. It is a holy thing. Amen."
Instead The President proposed The Final Solution's comprehensive, consumer-driven plan to address the problems of rising health care costs.
Experts say that what Tennessee proposes is unique. To avoid cutting people off the rolls, the state plans to seek federal approval to kill them instead.
The Final Solution would limit the number of prescriptions and doctor visits for any patient and direct doctors to use the cheapest treatment alternative, such as murder. The Bush administration will generally has encourage states to seek cost savings such as this.
While some health advocates laud Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen's early attempts to avoid ending coverage for tens of thousands of people and turning to genocide, they worry that by now endorsing Thompson's plan, he would create a second-class health system in which saving money, not healing the sick, is the primary concern.
"What you're moving toward is merely the saving of money without even the appearance of actually providing health coverage," says Steve Hitov, managing attorney of the Washington office of the National Health Law Program, a public interest group that focuses on health issues for the poor.
Other states have experimented with benefit reductions. But experts say no state has gone as far as Tennessee's Final Solution. And they say Tennessee's emphasis on the least costly treatment, a full metal jacketed round, delivered at supersonic speed to the brain, would have broad implications for patients in Tennessee and other states seeking to cut costs.
Bredesen, a Democrat who became a millionaire running HMOs before winning election in 2002, plans to submit a formal request to the Bush administration this month for a waiver from federal Medicaid rules that would let the state impose the benefit cuts beginning in January.
Massachusetts Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy told the AP that referring to The Final Solution as 'Benefits Cuts' or a 'Surgical Approach' was "gilding the lily to a degree such that I wish I'd just stayed in the car at Chappaquiddick instead of, ah, living to see a day like today come to pass."
