A Small Business Owner Speaks out on Health Care Reform
This lady shows a lot of understanding and offers simple solutions that would help all of us without totally overhauling the system. What do you think?Labels: health care costs, health care reform
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Wishing Won’t Make it So
This week President Obama and the Democratic congress is beginning work on what they call health care reform. While many trial balloons have been sent up, the consensus seems to be landing on Senator Kennedy’s plan, which theoretically creates a public/private option. In reality, it creates a lot more requirements for private plans, which will undoubtedly push private insurers out of the market. Scott E. Harrington, professor of health-care management and insurance and risk management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, analyzes this plan in the Wall Street Journal, suggesting that it won’t be long before private plans are driven out of business.
Folks, let’s face it. It’s government involvement in the health care system that has caused most of the problems we have today. Health care prior to 1960 was quite good and quite affordable. From the beginning of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s, the government has paid less than the cost of care while increasing regulatory requirements. When I worked in the hospital field 25 years ago, we were struggling to make budget under increasing federal cost constraints. The situation has only gotten worse. Yes, some people have problems getting health insurance and yes, the cost is exorbitant. But government involvement will only make it worse. It will ultimately result in shortages and rationing, just like in every other country with a national health system. And just how do we expect inexperienced politicians who've never run anything to solve a problem that has baffled the professionals for decades?
The Obama administration still doesn’t know how it will cover the cost of this plan – approximately $1 trillion over 10 years. Obama has proposed $634 billion in tax increases and spending cuts as a down payment on the plan and is soon expected to outline an additional $300 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts. And this in addition to the trillions already spent on bailouts and the proposed new budget. The administration has proposed taxing employer-paid health benefits, which will result in fewer of those and reduce personal disposable income -- a plan which he criticized McCain for proposing during the campaign, by the way...
Ask yourself: what has government ever done well or for a lower cost than private industry? If you love the DMV and postal service, you’ll love national health care. Personally, I’ll keep what I’ve got.
By the way, now the Kennedy Plan proposes covering long term care – a true sink hole.
Labels: government, health care costs, national health care, universal health coverage
Monday, May 11, 2009
Why We Can’t Afford National Health Insurance
Jeffrey H. Anderson and Investors Business Daily published one of the best articles I’ve read on the problems with national health insurance or Medicare for all. They explain the simple economics of a public payer in any situation, and particularly in health care, where normal competition doesn’t work. According to the article:
Health insurers don't provide a service, per se. They are middlemen or financiers. They contract with others — doctors, nurses, hospitals — who provide the actual service. In such a context, genuine private-public competition is impossible. For no one can match government's ability to dictate the prices and availability of services rendered by others.
In discussing the “Medicare for all” option, the article says, “More often the choice will be made by employers, who will decide whether they want to keep offering private insurance to their employees. To save money, many will choose to offer only the government-run plan, which should be called the "employer option" or perhaps the "government option for employers." By any name, it's an option for employers to force employees into government-run care.”
Because government is such a large contractor, it already pays only 81 cents for every dollar of service provided. Doctors, nurses and hospitals go without the difference or pass along the costs to private insurers or individuals. So government can fix prices, at little or no cost to itself.
The article offers three reasons why it’s bad, even if government can lower health care costs in this way:
First, Medicare pays less per procedure, but it doesn't pay less. What Medicare gains per procedure, it loses in poorly coordinated care, wasteful procedures, fraudulent claims and bureaucratic waste.
Despite paying only 81 cents on the dollar, Medicare's costs since 1970 have risen more than twice as fast as the costs of all other health care in America combined. Per patient, Medicare costs have risen 27% more than all other nationwide health care costs — 41% if you include the prescription drug benefit.
Medicare is far more expensive than privately run care, and it's leading us toward financial disaster.
Second, a government-run system would kill any chance at real reform. The core problem with American health care is that the patients aren't the payers. So providers and insurers don't cater to patients, and patients don't shop for value. Each element caters to whoever pays it: Providers cater to insurers (and the government); insurers cater to employers. Nobody caters to consumers.
A vibrant free market would aggressively cater to consumers, who in turn would shop for value — thereby making health care more consumer friendly, affordable and better. We'll never get there if the government takes over the insurance business. That will cement in place the core problem with today's system. We need a change, not another coat of cement.
Third, once government has run private insurance out of business, providers will no longer be able to shift costs to them. This will result in higher costs to taxpayers and lower wages for medical professionals, which will attract fewer people to the profession. If anyone doubts this, do they also doubt that higher pay attracts teachers?
Lines will form, care will be rationed and a two-tiered system will emerge: The very rich will pay for the care they want — whether here or abroad — out of their own pockets. The rest of us will have plenty of time, while we stand in line, to reflect on how nice it would be to have private insurance and the personal freedom it affords.
I don’t know about you, but any further government involvement in health care scares me to death.
Labels: health care costs, Medicare, national health care
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Health Care Costs Threaten America
The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report quotes Comptroller General David Walker who testified at a Senate Budget Committee hearing this week. He said that increased health care costs and an aging population have placed the federal budget on an "imprudent and unsustainable path" and that "passage of time only serves to worsen this situation."According to Walker, if "future promised and funded Social Security and Medicare benefits, veterans' health care, and a range of other commitments and contingencies" are met, the structural debt at the current rate of growth and spending will total $53 trillion.
He said, "If there is one thing that could bankrupt America, it's rising health care costs." Walker added that the next president and Congress will have about five years to address the issue before large tax increases and reductions in benefits are required.
If we can’t afford what we already provide, how in the world will we afford a costly universal health care plan! How long will we try to be all things to all people—and risk being nothing to anyone?
Labels: budget cuts, health care costs, tax increases
Friday, November 02, 2007
Now Here’s a Thoughtful Gift…
Here’s a new one. Just in time for the holidays, you'll be able to buy Dad a gift card that pays for his semiannual trip to the urologist.That's gotta rank below socks and underpants, no?
Highmark Inc., the Pittsburgh-based health insurer, has developed a new Healthcare Gift Card that they hope will encourage people who might be reluctant to visit the doctor or spend their money on prescriptions -- namely, seniors and college students -- to do so. They expect a big market from GenSandwichers.
The card itself costs $4.95, and can be loaded with as little as $25, which might cover a prescription co-pay, to as much as $5,000, which could pay for an elective surgery, such as Lasik. So if you’re at a loss for what to get Mom or Dad, here ya go!
Labels: aging parents, health care costs, sandwich generation
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Health Care Costs Expected to Increase
A study conducted by the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid centers suggests that U.S. health care costs may almost double over the next 10 years to $4.1 trillion annually, or 20 cents of every dollar spent, according to a study by federal economists and actuaries.The estimate is based on a 6.9 percent average annual growth rate in health care spending. The study also predicts that increased government involvement will increase costs, and suggests that we aren’t necessarily getting better health care for the increased costs.
And yet, there’s a push for increased government involvement through universal health insurance. Why?
Labels: health care costs, Medicaid, Medicare
Friday, January 12, 2007
Medicare Part D Negoiated Prices will Hurt Elderly
The House of Representatives today passed H.R.4, which would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate prices with drug companies. The negotiated prices would be standardized across the U.S. for Medicare Part D beneficiaries.Republican opponents say the bill, which passed 255-170, would actually raise drug prices and retard pharmaceutical competition, putting a crimp in research on new drugs. Actuaries from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) agree.
In an OpEd for The Hill, Sally C. Pipes, president and CEO of the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute and author of “Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health-Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer” challenges the wisdom of Nancy Pelosi’s “fix” for Medicare Part D. Her article is well worth the read as she points out that negotiating Part D will result in a restrictive formulary and lowered life expectancy.
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Acting Administrator, Leslie Norwalk agrees. She said that the only leverage in bargaining for discounts with drugmakers is to block some products from the list of covered drugs.
They're right. Government involvement in health care has done nothing but increase costs since its passage in 1965. Not because more people are covered, but because when you have such a huge purchaser of any good or service, that purchaser can dictate prices even to the detriment of the supplier.
In health care, Medicare and Medicaid have not covered their costs since their inception. The difference is shifted to private insurers and patients without insurance, resulting in more people without health insurance. And of course, those pockets are not endlessly deep, so we’ve seen providers go out of business as well as a significant increase in overall health care costs.
In the fifteen years following the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, expenditures for health care in dollars increased nearly sixfold, and health care costs rose from 6 percent to 9 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). In the next 20 years, costs increased another fivefold, and more than doubled as a percent of GDP.
U.S. Health Care Costs
Dollars Percentage of GDP
1950 $12.7 billion 4.5 percent
1965 $40 billion (est.) 6 percent
1980 $230 billion 9 percent
2000 $1.2 trillion 14 percent
Anything the government does to require price negotiation will do more harm than good for both seniors and the rest of us. Medicare Part D is bad now; under the Democratic plan, it will only get worse.
Labels: elderly parents, health care costs, Medicare Part D, universal health coverage