Democrats call for Medicaid 2.0

WASHINGTON, June 11 (UPI) -- Growth in the cost of Medicaid is a crisis in many states, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen said Saturday.

"It's forcing states to choose between quality health care on one hand and a quality education for our children on the other," Bredesen said on the Democrats' weekly radio address.

States have been forced to reduce Medicaid enrollment and benefits, he said.

"Let's scrap the old, inefficient version of Medicaid that's led us to spend more and more of our finite resources on a system that's never yielded the kind of public health results we'd hoped for," he said. "Let's launch a new version, Medicaid 2.0."

Bredesen called for a system in which every beneficiary pays some sort of fee, in return for a pared down selection of available services "before we bring in the fancy trimmings."

Breseden said the Food and Drug Administration reported in 2002 that it approved 78 new drugs, only seven of which contained new active ingredients that were improvements over existing medications. Yet, he said, in most states Medicaid has continued to pay for the new and more expensive drugs.