If you’ve spent any time in cubicle-land, you’ve no doubt seen a piece of paper, perhaps photocopied one too many times, with this message: “Poor planning on your part does not an emergency make on my part.”
I thought of that when I came across a story about Minnesota’s leading legislator on health care. It’s fair to say that Sen. Linda Berglin (D-Minneapolis) is a fan of a massive expansion of government in the area of health care, if not an outright single-payer plan.
Pushback from the nation’s governors continue. Gov. David Paterson (D-New York) says he’s against any health reform that ends up costing New York more.
While Paterson says he applauds President Obama’s general program, “if there are any of these matching programs where the state has to put in money, New York State can’t be interested.”
From Nebraska comes news about a hospital owned by the federal government: VA hospital crumbling.
While it’s bad enough that the hospital in Omaha had “crumbling windows and walls,” it has “seriously outdated surgical capacity.”
To be honest, I’m not sure what “outdated surgical capacity” means, but the term hardly inspires confidence.
What else do we know about TennCare?
From the Weekly Standard: "Tennesseeans are especially skeptical of Obamacare — and with reason.”
TennCare most obviously parallels the “public plan,” which is now dead on the national level. So you might think that TennCare isn’t relevant. Then again, the “public plan” is still alive, in the form of co-ops.
Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen is leading the nation’s governors against any health reform that shifts the bill to state budgets.
As I noted the other day, Bredesen inherited a mess in TennCare when he came to office, and then made dramatic cuts to Tennessee’s effort to make sure that everyone in the state had insurance.
Megan McArdle has this to say about the prospects for new prescription drugs in an America in which government manages everything about health care:
And when the profits go, so go the incentives to develop new drugs. Which is not to say that pharmaceutical companies will go away. They will just do what is in their own self-interest, in ways that harm the public’s health:
At their annual meeting, the Canadian Medical Association has outlined one major mission for the upcoming year:
Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country – who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting – recognize that changes must be made.
North Dakota is taking on an interesting experiment:
It sounds a bit like one of those psychology experiments in which researchers give college freshmen $50 to blow in a simulation. It may be interesting to watch in the lab, but will it translate to the real world?
The “public option” — a government-run health insurance plan — may be dead. Or is it? From an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal:
How government mucks around in the insurance market is less important than the fact it does.
(Cross-posted from State House Call.)
People have paid a lot of attention to the shortcomings of the current health reform proposals on the table. But are there better solutions? Yes, says Michael Cannon, who offers up six of them in this Op-Ed. One idea that should be more widely circulated is the large health savings account as a modification of employer-sponsored insurance.
Over the weekend, the “public option” seems to have fallen out of favor with President Obama, who no longer sees the government-run insurance program as an “essential element” of health reform.
The administration continues to affirm its belief in “competition with the private sector” as a key element of health care reform:
MoveOn.org recently set out some talking points for townhall meetings:
“Broken” is too strong of a word, but yes, there are serious problems that should be addressed. But the “public option” (insurance that is either run by government or distorted more than the usual insurance) will only make things worse. Apparently MoveOn.org is unaware of the fact that Medicaid is busting state budgets, Medicaid patients are having more trouble seeing doctors and Medicare is sending the country’s finances to hell in a handbasket. Given the record of those two probrams, it’s a joke to say that “costs will go down” with yet another government foray into health care.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services’ website, HealthReform.gov is trying hard to convince Michigan that health care reforms will help the state. They begin with what turns out to be an unrealistic claim that the government’s proposed reforms would reduce the cost of health care in Michigan (despite the fact that we still don’t know what, exactly, they would entail), and also say that reform would increase choice for Michiganders seeking health insurance.
Medicine is too bureaucratic, tied up in red tape from both insurance companies and government agencies. Some medical professionals and companies are exploring ways to make medicine less bureaucratic and more responsive to patients. One method is the retail health clinic, such as the kinds that you find in supermarkets, drug stores and department stores.
Can you expand government spending by $1 trillion and not end up with more restrictions on individual choices and decisions? It can’t be done, says Newt Gingrich, writing in the Los Angeles Times.
Among the ways in which you’ll lose control: One proposal in Congress will create an “essential benefits package,” which will determine what must be in your insurance policy—even stuff you’ll never use or have an interest in. (It’s sort of like forcing everyone who wants renter's insurance to buy coverage for the management company’s heating and ventilation system.) It also creates the “Health Choices Administration.” Yikes! I’d like to make my own choices, thank you very much.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services is using tax dollars to lobby for a government takeover of the health care market. They’ve created a Web site — HealthCare.gov — and sent out press releases with a list of ways that health reform will “help” each state.
Also from John Mackey’s column in the Wall Street Journal:
Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.
Rationing health care by price? "Why not?" says Megan McArdle.
(Cross-posted from State House Call.)
This next item is a few days old, but it’s worth repeating:
In a letter to leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, CBO director Douglas W. Elmendorf said the evidence suggests that the cost of making services such as cancer screening, cholesterol management, vaccinations and wellness training broadly available would far outweigh any savings ultimately generated.
John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, has an excellent Op-Ed in today’s Wall Street Journal outlining his vision for a plan to reform American health care.
Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:
Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan’s costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.
I am lucky. Unlike many of my friends, I'm not among the ranks of the 4.1 million Canadians (about 12 percent) who don't have a primary care physician. The reason I have a doctor and they don't is because I have connections.
I haven't always been so fortunate. Although I'm in my mid-20s, for several years I made do at a "teen health center" for yearly check-ups. But then my mother began working with a woman whose husband works in the same building as a large medical clinic. This colleague (via her husband) was able to get my mom an appointment with an excellent doctor in the building. After about a year of seeing this doctor, my mom managed to get me a spot in the practice, too.
(Editor's note: The following has been republished with permission from the Foundation for Economic Education’s “Not So Fast!”). It was first printed on August 5, 2009.
By William Anderson
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman recently made an extraordinary statement regarding the application of markets to medical care. Writing in his July 31 column, Krugman stated:
The White House is serious about health care reform. They are so serious that they have asked anyone who sees “disinformation” being spread that might cause Americans to doubt that President Obama’s agenda for health care reform is good for the country to report it to the White House by emailing it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
Rep. Paul Ryan is interviewed on MSNBC about health care reforms and does an exceptional job of letting people know why it’s prudent not to rush a vote on a 1,000 page bill that most legislators haven’t even read.
He also busts the myths that legislators already have access to a public option and that opposing the public plan is opposing competition in the health care market.
This 20/20 segment on health care reform aired on Friday. John Stossel talks to experts about waiting in the Canadian system, town lotteries to get a family doctor, the price of innovation and one way you can get fast access to health care in Canada. (Hint: you have to bark!)
