The Whac-A-Mole school of health care policy

Boy, if you ever needed a summary of how messed up our health care system is, check out this story by Robert Pear in the New York Times. Entitled, "Nursing Homes Seek Exemptions From Health Law," the essence is that nursing homes want to be exempt from the employer requirement to provide health care benefits to their staff because the payments nursing homes get from Medicare and Medicaid to deliver care to patients are too low to provide enough cash to those institutions to offer those benefits.

I am sorry to beat a dead horse, but this is a direct result of political figures -- Democrats and Republican -- who give the impression that we can have it all. I don't know what the President meant when he said that he would deliver access, choice, and lower costs. But I always felt that by "lower costs," he meant "lower appropriations" by the federal and state government for Medicare and Medicaid payments.

This feels like the government equivalent of Whac-A-Mole. Pass a law-- Bam! Reduce government payments -- Bam! Exempt employers -- Bam! Add more people to government subsidized insurance plans -- Bam! Reduce government payments -- Bam!