The Caesar Rodney Institute says that in the health reform debate, we should ask “If Americans were starting from scratch with establishing a health care insurance framework in America, what would we want?”
It’s not that we can actually start from scratch, the institute says. But rather, it focuses the mind.
Geoffrey Lawrence, a policy analyst with the Nevada Policy Research Institute, discusses the public option in this video:
Lawrence focuses on concerns over cost-shifting and the fact that even without a new government program to compete with private companies, legislative proposals favored by leaders in Congress are “detestable on their own mandates.”
Michigan residents are more familiar than many Americans with the downfalls of Canada’s government-run health care system.
That’s because so many Canadians come here to receive life-saving care when the wait lists in the country’s socialized medical system constitute a serious threat to their lives or quality of life.
Health care “coverage” isn’t the same as actually getting health care. Case in point: The Oregon health plan denied a cancer patient’s request for a new prescription drug — but was willing to pay a doctor to help her commit suicide.
You can watch a short video from a local TV newscast, which features the patient herself, as well as the head of the rationing board.
CalPERS, the retirement system for California state employees, wants Congress to do something about rising insurance costs. It complains that insurance premiums it pays for its employees, their dependents and retirees has increased 60 percent since 2003.
Yet more proof that the “free market” in health insurance is anything but free. A South Dakota insurer is merging with a company in North Dakota. It would like to offer insurance in North Dakota.
But first, Sanford Health needs to wait at least two months for the North Dakota insurance department to review its application.
One argument in the health care debate is that we simply must require everyone to have health insurance, otherwise, those of us who do have insurance will pay more.
So how has that worked out in the one state that has actually done that?
Hasn’t the state at least kept the rate of increase under control? Consider this: Nationwide, premiums increased 33 percent between 2003 and 2008. In the Bay State, they increased 40 percent.
Though this site focuses on responding to and commenting on news relating to health reform, sometimes it’s useful to return to some basic principles. To that end, let me direct you to a useful publication by the National Center for Policy Analysis, called "State Health Care Reform: Key Questions and Answers."
Very few people live in employer-sponsored housing or eat from employer-sponsored grocery stores, yet a majority of people get employer-sponsored health insurance. That means that losing a job is a double whammy.
The National Center for Policy Analysis offers 10 ways to keep health coverage if you lose your job.
As some Americans remain swept up in the attempt to further socialize health care, it’s helpful to remember that excitement about a proposed sweeping change to the system is not a new phenomenon.
(h/t to Don Boudreaux for the quote)
We need to remember that there is no perfect system in health care, and ObamaCare is no exception. The pros and cons of every system need to be thoroughly studied and debated. This is one of the many reasons Americans are demanding that legislators read the health care reform bills before voting on them.
A number of legislators have introduced bills to amend their states’ constitutions with the goal of preserving health freedom. The bills typically include language that does the following:
The states represented so far include:
The Arizona measure will be on the general election ballot in 2010; the Florida resolution has been prefiled in advance of the 2010 session, the Michigan resolution was filed just this week and the Minnesota resolution was carried over from the 2009 to the 2010 session.
Recently the North Dakota Policy Council held an open meeting on health care reform. Now the council has put a video of the event online.
It features ideas for making health and health insurance more affordable, and lessons from states that have enacted “universal” care.
Are your tax dollars and charitable donations being used to stump for a government takeover of health care?
The Deseret News has an article about how the health care debate is playing out in Utah. It mentions that “Judi Hilman, executive director of the Utah Health Policy Project,” became the de facto defender of federal reform proposals during the meeting.”
Timely Medical Alternatives is a company set up to expedite the treatment of patients on wait lists in Canada’s health care system. By helping Canadians access private medical care in the United States or Quebec (where the government monopoly on health insurance was found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court), Timely Medical Alternatives can provide their clients “with options, referrals to hospitals, clinics and diagnostic imaging facilities.”
In today’s Detroit Free Press, columnist Brian Dickerson bemoans the fact that health insurance reimburses individuals for health care on the same terms regardless of whether they adopt healthy or unhealthy lifestyles:
Welcome, Brian, to the world of skewed incentives that dominates the current health care market — all the product of various government regulations and impositions. In this case:
On July 28, Jon Caldara, late-night talk radio host on Denver’s KOA AM850, spoke at a rally for health care freedom called “Hands Off My Health Care.”
Here’s the video:
Caldara asks, “What’s the rush?” and then encourages the crowd to demand that members of Congress “read the bill.”
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.)
