Obama’s unhealthy reform
It’s hard to know whether President Obama’s health-care “reform” is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three.
This is Newsweek?! Well, it’s Samuelson in Newsweek.
The president keeps saying it’s imperative to control runaway health spending. He’s right. The trouble is that what’s being promoted as health-care “reform” almost certainly won’t suppress spending and, quite probably, will do the opposite.
He crunches the numbers.
The message in these dismal figures is that uncontrolled health spending is almost single-handedly determining national priorities. It’s reducing discretionary income, raising taxes, widening budget deficits and squeezing other government programs. Worse, much medical spending is wasted, the CEA report says. It doesn’t improve Americans’ health; some care is unneeded or ineffective.
The Obama administration’s response is to talk endlessly about restraining health spending—”bending the curve” is the buzz—as if talk will suffice.
It has so far. Extraordinary effectiveness at talking helped carry him to the White House.
So…
The president summoned the heads of major health-care groups representing doctors, hospitals, drug companies and medical device firms to the White House. All pledged to bend the curve. This is mostly public relations. Does anyone believe the American Medical Association can control the nation’s 800,000 doctors or that the American Hospital Association can command the 5,700 hospitals?
No, not at all. A great many doctors don’t even belong to the AMA or pay attention to its political endorsements.
The central cause of runaway health spending is clear. Hospitals and doctors are paid mostly on a fee-for-service basis and reimbursed by insurance, either private or governmental. The open-ended payment system encourages doctors and hospitals to provide more services—and patients to expect them….That’s the crux of the health-care dilemma, and Obama hasn’t confronted it. His emphasis on controlling costs is cosmetic.
The main goal is providing all citizens access to health care, and Congress is grappling with several different proposals on how to do that.
The one certain consequence of expanding insurance coverage is that it would raise spending. When people have insurance, they use more health services. That’s one reason Obama’s campaign proposal was estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over a decade…
Which, by the way, some big media are only now ‘hearing’. Last night on a PBS news hour one correspondent stated that Mr. Obama has only now attached an estimated price tag of $1.2 trillion on the reform. I talked back to the tv (quietly), saying ‘no, he actually did that during the campaign, don’t you guys remember?’ Guess not.
Indeed, the higher demand for health care might raise costs across the board, increasing both government spending and private premiums.
So, more of the same? We can’t afford that.
The place to start would be costly Medicare, the nation’s largest insurance program serving 45 million elderly and disabled. Of course, this would be unpopular, because it would disrupt delivery patterns and reimbursement practices. It’s easier to pretend to be curbing health spending while expanding coverage and spending. Presidents have done that for decades, and it’s why most health industries see “reform” as a good deal.
Sounds good, anyway.
