Joan Venocchi criticizes the business community’s skirting of its responsibility on health care, with all the moral critique that Charley and others have been bringing to the health care legislation debate.
In her op-ed, though, this seemingly innocent line stuck out: "As business walks away, so, too, does the federal government." She’s talking specifically about the federal government’s Medicaid restrictions that John McDonough had mentioned Tuesday. (See also John’s thoughts about a possibly conscious intervention in state health care politics by the Bush administration.) But where Venocchi sees mere simultaneity, I see causation. A couple of weeks ago, during the height of bicameral negotiation on health care legislation on Beacon Hill, I wrote that the business community was likely playing a game of political chicken in hopes that federal: "Given GOP control of the federal government and an impending gubernatorial election here, the business community has every reason to wait out the storm of rising costs another year or so in hopes that political winds will blow their way when a true crisis forces reform." It was just a hunch then, but now I’m feeling more confirmed in my suspicions.
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