Who says that health care is strictly a national issue? Chris Rants, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the office of governor in the state of Iowa, is on the stump with four ideas for addressing health care costs: electronic records for all within four years; paying hospitals for quality and not simply number of services; creating a state Web site that lists prices at various hospitals; and medical malpractice reform.
At one Minnesota hospital, a colonscopy costs insurance companies $402, while at another it’s $1,354. This is just one factoid you can find at MNHealthScores.org, which is a project of the non-profit group Minnesota Community Measurement. Data on 80 to 85 percent of the state’s primary care doctors is available, though that of specialists is not.
It’s a familiar story. A patient faces a serious medical condition. There’s a new prescription drug that may give the patient a shot at life. The heartless insurance company refuses to pay for the drug, giving the patient a choice between near-certain death and huge medical bills.
One of the symptoms of heavy involvement by government in health care is shortages caused by price controls.
Although doctors in places like Canada and France are still well-paid, they are paid less than they would be in a free market in order to keep health care costs down. This even happens in the U.S. under Medicaid, which pays doctors at a lower rate.
Jarrett Skroup asks an intriguing question in the Midland County Public Policy Examiner: Why don’t advocates of a government-run health insurance plan put their money where their mouth is?
If it’s easy to lower costs in health care spending by adding one insurance company, and it would be profitable to do so (as a government-run plan would have to be to be self-sustaining as the president claims it would be), why haven’t any of them simply done it?
How many people are in favor of health freedom? Not too many, writes Anthony Gregory:
Gregory also has a challenge for opponents of ObamaCare:
Since football season is around the corner, I’ll put it in football terms: Defense is important, but offense is essential.
Up to 100,000 people die due in part to infections they picked up while staying in a hospital. David Goldhill’s father was one of them. That sad fact led him on a quest to understand American health care, which he writes about in The Atlantic.
From there Goldhill looks for structural problems: “There needs to be a business reason why an industry, year in and year out, would be able to get away with poor customer service, unaffordable prices, and uneven results—a reason my father and so many others are unnecessarily killed.”
Is health care a right, or a service that we pay for like any other? The answer to that question makes a big difference. Two officials with the Sutherland Institute addressed that question in a hearing before a committee of the Utah Legislature.
It may seem paradoxical, but acting as if health care is a right actually reduces access to care, while viewing it as a service can expand access. They also commend “authentic charity care” as a way of complementing the market.
If you’re concerned about your phone company selling your personal information for commercial gain, you might want to consider the privacy implications of the House health care bill.
The CBS News blog highlights the problem of upholding privacy protections while also combating fraud.
In the heat of political debates, it’s easy to focus on the wrong problem:
Look past the question of “Who should we get our insurance from?” to ask “What should we expect insurance to do?”
(Cross-posted from State House Call.)
Does government-dictated “evidence-based medicine” violate the ethical obligations of physicians? Maria Martins says yes:
It requires freedom and an independent mind to evaluate the evidence. The evaluation process is the art of medicine. You cannot legislate integrity and competence into doctors whose minds and judgment have been regimented to follow “best practice” guidelines.
The state of Delaware decided to cut its pharmacy reimbursement rate in its Medicaid program, causing Walgreens to threaten to drop out. (The company said it would lose money on filling Medicaid prescriptions as a result of the cuts.)
In turn, one legislator threatened to drop Walgreens from the state employees health insurance plan. The trade associations for pharmacies in turn talked of a lawsuit against the state, alleging a violation of state and federal laws.
We all know about horror stories from Canada and Great Britain when it comes to health care. What about France? After all, the New York Times recently published a positive article about it. That, in turn, caused Guy Sorman, writing in City Journal, to remind us of the economic consequences of a large role for government in health care.
I suppose it’s encouraging that advocates of a government health insurance company (“public option”) invoke the word “competition.”
The Wall Street Journal makes a point that is so obvious I wish I had mentioned it here before: OK, if you’re for competition, how about enhancing competition among insurance companies by letting them sell across state lines?
John Stossel has a column today in Jewish World Review on health care reform. If what President Obama wants is more choice and competition, Stossel says, he’s going about it the wrong way.
In place of the variety of products that competition would generate, we would be forced “choose” among virtually identical insurance plans. Government would define these plans down to the last detail. Every one would have at least the same “basic” coverage, including physical exams, maternity benefits, well-baby care, alcoholism treatment and mental-health services. Consumers could not buy a cheap, high-deductible catastrophic policy. Every insurance company would have to use an identical government-designed pricing structure. Prices would be the same for sick and healthy.
Can we get a representative from within the bureaucracy of a major political party to enunciate some patient-friendly health-care reform?
From Colorado blogger Ben DeGrow:
I’m talking about today’s Washington Post op-ed by RNC chairman Michael Steele that actually pits the GOP as the pandering “Party of the Entitlement Status Quo” (H/T Jon Henke).
Rich Karlgaard has a short explanation of our health care problems.
“This is how President Obama should start a speech on health care — "My fellow Americans: We are old. We are fat. We are afraid of lawyers."
Each contributes to higher spending on health care.
I love this headline from a blog post at The Insider, a site published by The Heritage Foundation: "The Power to Make People Buy Stuff Is Not in the Constitution." It’s about the individual mandate to buy insurance.
(Cross-posted from State House Call.)
It’s easy to forget that health and health care are two different things, though they do affect each other. Personal choices make a difference in the quality of a person’s health.
“Americans make a number of lifestyle choices that lead to a greater proportion of babies being born with a low birth weight,” which increases the chances of infant mortality. Even so, “the United States actually has a lower infant mortality rate for low-birth weight babies than does Canada.”
For the Christian, “love thy neighbor” is right up there with “love the Lord thy God.” Should that compel the Christian to lobby for a health care industry that’s heavily regulated if not controlled by government?
Not so fast, says Rev. Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the study of religion and liberty.
Something called the League of American Voters says that it wants to purchase advertising time on ABC for a thirty-second spot, but was denied. They call it a “brazen act of censorship.” That’s a bit overwrought — I prefer to call it “editorial discretion,” since “censorship,” strictly speaking, is something that governments do.
The Georgia Public Policy Foundation says that the Congress could learn from Georgia’s example:
For more, see the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
(Cross-posted from State House Call.)
Eric Davis of the Nevada Policy Research Institute reminds us of one of the bizarre features of health care today: We rarely know how much something will cost ahead of time. As if we needed another example of how the health care industry needs a shake-up.
Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) argues an obvious but important point: Medical malpractice reform is nowhere in the national debate on health care, and it should be.
Perry offers up his own state as an example of the problems caused by medical lawsuits, and what a state might do about it.
You know the expression about taking something with a grain of salt? When it comes to advocates of new government health programs making estimates of how much their dreams will cost, you might want to find the Sam’s Club-sized version.
Mitch Pearlstein, president of the Center of the American Experiment, dusted off an Op-Ed he wrote during the days of debates over HillaryCare, the the insights are still instructive.
