Three health care proposals to oppose
January 5th, 2009 | by Brian Schwartz |Michael Cannon writes in the Washington Times that do avoid disastrous health care reform, we must oppose:
- Government-run health care for the middle class (which Obama has proposed)
- mandatory insurance
- insurance price controls (e.g., community rating)
On point 1, Cannon writes:
Medicare is an unwise model for reform. When private health plans and providers try to meet the glaring need for electronic medical records, coordinated care, and medical-error reduction, Medicare’s change-resistant payment system punishes them for doing so. That discourages innovation and costs lives.
The average family of four pays $5,200 in taxes to fund Medicare, only to have Medicare waste one third of it (about $1,700) on services that do nothing to make seniors healthier or happier. That’s a pure income transfer to providers of $150 billion - roughly the entire economic output of South Carolina. Diverting those resources from more productive uses, such as covering the uninsured, costs lives.
The Left’s plans could cost additional lives by letting government bureaucrats decide who gets medical care. Merely providing current-law benefits under Medicare and other programs will require Congress to double income taxes by midcentury. Since Americans are not likely to tolerate rates that high, at some point Congress will be forced to limit Medicare spending.
The Left’s idea of limiting Medicare spending is to have bureaucrats tell Mom she cannot have the cancer treatment she wants. Obama & Co. propose taxpayer-funded research that will help Medicare do just that. Expanding government health programs will hasten the day that government rations medical care to seniors.
Finally, a public plan would pay providers less than private insurance. Patients switching to public coverage may therefore find that their doctor can no longer see them, just as Medicare enrollees are having an increasingly difficult time finding primary care physicians. [see here, here, and here.]
I added the links. See also this one on Medicare waste.
tags: community rating, mandatory insurance, Medicare
