Tag Archives: Single-Payer

Commentary

Dean of Harvard Medical School gives health care bill a failing grade

Leave a comment

Story from the Wall Street Journal, by the Dean of Harvard Medical School Jeffrey S. Flier.

Excerpt:

As the dean of Harvard Medical School I am frequently asked to comment on the health-reform debate. I’d give it a failing grade.

[…]Speeches and news reports can lead you to believe that proposed congressional legislation would tackle the problems of cost, access and quality. But that’s not true. The various bills do deal with access by expanding Medicaid and mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost—and thus addresses an important social goal. However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price and quality are almost impossible, and patients lose their ability to be the ultimate judges of value.

Worse, currently proposed federal legislation would undermine any potential for real innovation in insurance and the provision of care. It would do so by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies, hospitals, professional organizations and pharmaceutical companies, rather than the patients who should be our primary concern.

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

In order to have an economy recover, you need people running government who actually understand health care and economics. My lunch-time book is Regina Hertzlinger’s “Who Killed Health Care?”. Regina teaches at Harvard University, as well. She talks about how we need to lower costs and improve quality by introduce elements of choice and competition. Her plan is similar to the Republican’s Patient’s Choice Act. Consumer-Driven health care is the right solution to the problem of rising health care costs. Obama’s plan just adds fuel to the fire.

The right way to reform health care without sacrificing liberty

Consumer-driven health care:

Health Care: Fostering Focus Factories
with Dr. Regina Hertzlinger
(8:46)

Choice, Competition Should Drive Health Care Reform
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(5:21)

The Republican Plan (“Patient Choice Act”) is consumer-driven:

Obama’s False Health Care Choice
with Rep. Paul Ryan
(10:39)

Ideas for Free-Market Health Care Reform
with Rep. Paul Ryan
(8:30)

What’s wrong with Obamacare, Medicare, RomneyCare and CanadaCare:

Competing with the Government
with Dr. Michael F. Cannon
(7:34)

Medicare: A Model for Reform?
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(4:34)

Lessons from Massachusetts Health Care Reform
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(4:18)

The Canadian Health Care Experience
with Sally C. Pipes
(7:45)

Puncturing the Myths of American Health Care
with Sally C. Pipes
(about 8 minutes)

Commentary

An evaluation of public-option health care plans in five US states

Leave a comment

Amazing article from IBD. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

But perhaps the worst — and closest — example of why a federal takeover of health care won’t work comes from Maine.

[…]Maine’s universal coverage plan is most similar to the plans circulating on Capitol Hill. It was proposed in May 2003 by Democrat Gov. John Baldacci and passed a scant four weeks later. Much like the $787 billion federal “stimulus” plan that passed Congress in February of this year, nobody read the Dirigo plan either.

While greasing the pipeline for quick passage of Dirigo Health, the governor assured that all of Maine’s 128,000 uninsured would be covered by 2009, the bureaucracy would be streamlined and health costs lowered, and the plan would fund itself based on system savings with no tax increases — a similar claim to what President Obama has said about a new federal plan.

Six years after it was passed, it has insured only 3% — roughly 3,400 — of the 128,000 promised.

By 2007, the system was so broke that it closed to new enrollees. It still has not reopened and has also cut and capped benefits. The “streamlined” bureaucracy has cost the state’s taxpayers $17 million in administrative costs to cover 9,600 people, leading one to wonder if there are more bureaucrats in the system than enrollees.

Systemwide insurance costs have increased 74% since Dirigo was passed, and the governor and legislature have tried — unsuccessfully — to raise taxes to fund the system.

The short article analyzes the numbers FIVE current public-option health care plans in Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Maine.

Share

Commentary

Can a social conservative support social safety net programs?

1 Comment

The full text is available in a PDF here. (H/T Stephen Baskerville)

I highly recommend this essay to social conservatives who do not yet understand why limiting the size of government is vital to preserving the autonomy of the family.

Every social conservative should be in favor of limited government, even in fiscal matters, not just on social issues. In my view, any social conservative who wants the government to tax “the rich” or big corporations is in reality undermining social conservatism.

The more money is taken from individuals, families and corporations, who have no political power to influence your family, and given to secular-left government bureaucrats who cater to left-wing special interest groups, the more the family is endangered.

Excerpt:

State controlled programs today in developed countries, almost universally, are polyamorous-friendly and monogamy-hostile. This is unjust from every perspective of political analysis because those who choose monogamy are, generally, the most effective, the cheapest and the safest in raising the next generation.

But they are unjust mainly because it is a universal, inalienable right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, including raising them in their culture.

Further, the social welfare state asks the monogamous to support the polyamorous, and uses the universal safety net insurance scheme (or taxes) to ensure that the monogamous pay more to support those who choose the polyamory culture. This is plainly unjust, but even more so because the monogamous do not have their own culture-friendly programs and their own children are the target of the culture of polyamory’s “Janissary” scheme. Justice will increase and tensions decrease when that culture of polyamory begins to pay its own costs.

One way to progress in this direction and to make the behavioral bureaucracy to serve both cultures is to give all parents, parents of both cultures, and control over the program money set aside for their children. That is giving parents vouchers, in one form or another for all three program areas

The social welfare safety net will still be in place but the parents (be they monogamous or polyamorous) will choose who holds the net in place for their children.

This requires a huge political effort on the part of the monogamy culture. Diverting the flow of money from the special interest groups (organized doctors, teachers, schools) and instead directing the voucher money (cost per child served) to the parent– who can then choose the individual doctor, teacher or school they want. The professionals will still receive the same amount of money. But instead of serving a bureaucracy they will be cooperating with the parents. But such a change is a big one in the political order and the culture of monogamy must harness itself to the task.

The whole thing is worth reading.