Where Is Uwe Reinhardt?

Uwe Reinhardt was the inspiration of the plan to reform health care in the 1990's created by Hilary Clinton. He was, and is, a Princeton professor of economics and,at the time, expounded a notion that any health care plan that cost more than 10% of the system's gross domestic product was inherently self digesting and would fail. The essence of his observations was that cost controls were mandatory; the health costs must be linked to the gross domestic product. In recessions, health care costs--and presumably services-- would decline proportionately.


Medicine is seen by different groups as a right, a product, a need, an expense, a business, a burden. The members of the medical fields see it as a responsibility. Reinhardt eliminated all the debate; all the history, the sentiment, the efforts to place the difficult transaction between physician and patient on a professional plane above the harsh and coarse economic facts. Reinhardt made that anxiety and that interaction completely financial and placed it peripherally as a function of the overall economy.There was a lot of criticism about the lack of medical input--there were only three physician advisers in a working staff of one thousand--but the idea never pretended to be a medical plan; it was always an economic plan first. The plan was born out of the need for economic control.


The failure of the plan was the result of a great ad campaign against it, hostility toward the distant arrogance of the plan creators and the feeling among the voting populous--correct, I believe--that the plan had much more to do about shoring up the eroding promises of Medicare than providing anyone health care.


Enter the new, improved plan. The current plan has been difficult to evaluate because so little is known about it other than the points raised in acrimonious debate. The point of interest, though, is where is Reinhardt?The specifics of this plan are different from Hillary's but the intent is the same: Cost control. The question is, with all the work done by Mr. Reinhardt, why is he not front and center, supporting the plan? And why do the adoptive supporters of the plan not call upon and revere the plan's biological father?