Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson shared his frustrations with a group of health policy experts yesterday. Frustrations with Washington's political bureaucracy and with his own inability to restructure Medicaid, which he called his biggest public-policy regret.
Thompson said Congress wouldn't let him and future HHS secretaries negotiate drug prices for the new Medicare prescription-drug plan. Critics say using Medicare's 42 million enrollees as bargaining leverage in price negotiations - a tactic that Congress never seriously considered - could save the program billions of dollars.
Thompson said he was thwarted in his effort to transform Medicaid. He wanted to shift most of its acute medical-care costs to the states while having the federal government assume the bulk of costly long-term nursing home care, but the plan failed.
"I tried, but I was unable to convince the governors that this is what they should do," said Thompson. Medicaid is now the subject of fierce debate as lawmakers consider cutting billions in federal money for the program to help trim the budget deficit.