The looming health-care crunch
Robert Reich has a nice summary of what's at stake in the D.C. fiscal debates:
Don't be confused by these alarms from the Social Security and Medicare trustees. Social Security is a tiny problem. Medicare is a terrible one, but the problem is not really Medicare; it's quickly rising health-care costs. Look more closely and the real problem isn't even health-care costs; it's a system that pushes up costs by rewarding inefficiency, causing unbelievable waste, pushing over-medication, providing inadequate prevention, over-using emergency rooms because many uninsured people can't afford regular doctor checkups, and spending billions on advertising and marketing seeking to enroll healthy people and avoid sick ones.
Comments
I agree 100% with Reich when he says: "it's a system that pushes up costs by rewarding inefficiency". And why is this? It is not because there are too many uninsured. It is because there are too many insured! Or, to be more exact, it is because too many have insurance plans that insulate them from the costs that that patient is putting on the system.
If my auto insurance provided 100% coverage of all my vehicle maintenance and repair costs and my only out of expense was a $20 copay I can guarantee you my car would be at the service shop at least once a month. This would be a no brainer. I would have a well maintained car and my insurance company would be broke.
Any rational economist would recognize that more government is not the answer to making health care more affordable. The obvious answer is to increase the supply of medical care providers and make the individual more responsible for paying medical care expenses. The free market does an excellent job of providing the product and services people need. Of course politicians hate the free market because it shows they are unnecessary parasites. Thus stooges like Reich respond by making illogical recommendations that will only compound the existing problem.
Posted by: Dan | May 18, 2009 12:38 PM
Single payer health care is the only solution.
Posted by: NotableM | May 18, 2009 12:52 PM
"Single payer health care is the only solution."
Why?
Please show where else this approach has enabled an economy to deliver increasing quality of service at decreasing costs? You cannot. Yet I can point to myriad examples where deregulation and more open markets did exactly that. Faith in a bogus economic model will only lead to disappointment.
Posted by: Dan | May 18, 2009 1:20 PM
The great thing about health care policy is that everybody is an expert, including those who have absolutely no credentials except being a lawyer, economist or journalist.
Posted by: save_the_rustbelt | May 18, 2009 3:41 PM
Maybe if we had at the least a public plan option that ran like medicare and the young and healthy paid premiums to it instead of profit making private insurance; medicare might have more reliable funding. Of course Obama the "change" president seems to be pandaring to politicians and going for the status quo.
Posted by: Ken | May 18, 2009 4:16 PM
They should look deeper on what the health care system really is and the problems it is facing, before they even make a drastic change. Not all changes are right and would make better; and it doesn't mean that it solves the main problem/s.
Posted by: Dental Thousand Oaks | June 23, 2009 1:14 AM