Why are [Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security] sacrosanct? Because, whatever else you can say about the entitlement state, no one disputes that it’s a moral imperative. Inefficient? Maybe. Expensive? You bet. But morally questionable? Absolutely not.

The problem with the entitlement state is not simply that it is bankrupting this country–the problem is that it is morally bankrupt.

Read the whole article: The Entitlement State Is Morally Bankrupt – Forbes.

Suppose you saw your doctor for a persistent headache. After performing a full battery of tests, he told you that your MRI scan showed a malignant brain tumor. Would you 1 work with him on a plan to treat your cancer, or 2 threaten the MRI manufacturer with a government investigation? Although most normal people would choose option 1, our government is responding to the news of the S&P credit downgrade with option 2.

Read the whole article: Pajamas Media » Don’t Shoot the Downgrade Messenger.

The Medicaid program imposes high costs while generating poor results. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video explains how block grants, such as the one proposed by Congressman Paul Ryan, will save money and improve healthcare by giving states the freedom to innovate and compete.

Read more on Medicaid reform.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons‘ summary of Yaron Brook’s talk:

To save American healthcare, not to mention to save the country itself, Advocates of freedom, free markets, and capitalism must take the moral high ground from the proponents of government-control, Dr. Yaron Brook tells patients and doctors on May 14, 2011 at a Doctors Town Hall.

Whether an idea works does not determines its success in the political system, but rather whether an idea is considered morally correct. Capitalism is proven to be effective but more importantly that that, it is the only ethically sound economic system. Free markets depend on voluntary cooperation between individuals not government force.

Dr. Brook is the Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

via YouTube – Yaron Brook, PhD – The immorality of government medicine.

More of Yaron Brook’s writings on health care.

“Having a Medicaid card in no way assures access to care,” said Dr. James B. Aiken, an emergency physician in New Orleans. …

“My Medicaid card is useless for me right now,” Ms. Dardeau said over lunch. “It’s a useless piece of plastic. I can’t find an orthopedic surgeon or a pain management doctor who will accept Medicaid.” …

With the expansion of Medicaid to cover nearly all people under 65 with incomes up to 133 percent of the official poverty level (up to $29,330 a year for a family of four), Medicaid will soon be the nation’s largest insurer. It accounts for almost half of the increase in coverage expected under Mr. Obama’s health law, but has received less attention than other parts of the law regulating private insurance. …

To hold down costs [spending], it has cut Medicaid payments to doctors, dentists, hospitals and other health care providers several times in the last two years. …

Dr. Kim A. Hardey, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Lafayette, said he received about $1,000 from the Louisiana Medicaid program for providing prenatal care and delivery for a full-term pregnancy, compared with $2,400 from private insurance.

With the expansion of Medicaid eligibility, he said, more of his patients will be on Medicaid, and fewer will have private insurance, which helps offset the financial losses doctors sustain on their Medicaid business.

Already, Dr. Hardey said, many of his patients have jobs with private insurance but switch to Medicaid when they become pregnant, avoiding premiums, deductibles and co-payments.

More: Cuts Leave Patients With Medicaid Cards, but No Specialist to See – NYTimes.com.

If government continues to immorally force taxpayers to fund Medicaid at least its co-payments, premiums, and deductibles should be higher.

(Via FIRM)

2. [T]he “Basic Health Plan,” what Greg Scandlen called “sort of a ‘public option’ in sheep’s clothing.” …

3. Waivers. Section 2711 waivers enable the health plans of businesses, labor unions and other groups to avoid having to comply with ObamaCare’s regulations, lest their members lose “the insurance they like.” The Department of Health and Human Services has granted 1,040 waivers in about six months. Naturally, a disproportionate share of those receiving waivers are unions, some of Obama’s biggest political allies.

4. More Waivers? State governments are now asking for waivers from ObamaCare’s medical-loss-ratio regulations. At present, Maine has received a waiver, Kentucky, Nevada and New Hampshire have applied, and 11 other states are preparing applications. …

5. Insurers Have Left The Child-Only Market.

6. Medicaid — Ouch! ObamaCare requires all states to expand their Medicaid program to 133% of the federal poverty level. Presently only eight states and Washington, D.C. make eligibility limits that generous. That expansion is expected to cost states at least an additional $118 billion through 2023. …

9. Cost Estimates Not Correct. An analysis by Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster showed that ObamaCare would not reduce overall health care costs …

10. Who Needs Evidence? Two of the new health care financing “models” pushed by ObamaCare are medical homes and Accountable Care Organizations. Yet there is very little research showing the medical homes are a cost-effective way of delivering care (and some research that they aren’t.) …

11. CLASS-less. ObamaCare included Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act.  … [i]t is not sustainable. Even Sebelius has admitted as much.

12. Physician-Owned Specialty Hospitals. A major source of innovation in health care, physician-owned specialty hospitals had long been a target of the Big Hospital Lobby — the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals — which doesn’t like competition. ObamaCare effectively prevents new physician-owned specialty hospitals from opening and makes it near impossible for existing ones to expand.

Read the whole article: The 12 Worst Features Of ObamaCare.

via FIRM.

Last summer, on my old blog, I put up a series of posts highlighting the findings of a study published in Annals of Surgery by a group of surgeons at the University of Virginia, entitled “Primary Payer Status Affects Mortality for Major Surgical Operations.” The study evaluated 893,658 major surgical operations occurring between 2003 and 2007, stratified by primary payer status, on three outcomes endpoints: in-hospital mortality, length of stay, and total costs incurred.

Despite the fact that the authors controlled for age, gender, income, geographic region, operation, and 30 comorbid conditions, Medicaid fared poorly compared to those with private insurance, Medicare, and even the uninsured. Relative to those with private insurance, Medicare, uninsured, and Medicaid patients were 45%, 74%, and 97% more likely to die in the hospital post-operatively. The average length of stay for private, Medicare, uninsured, and Medicaid patients was 7.38, 8.77, 7.01, and 10.49 days, respectively. Total costs per patient were $63,057, $69,408, $65.667, and $79,140 respectively.

Read the whole post:  How Medicaid Harms the Poor: A Counter-Rebuttal, Part I.

Read more about Medicaid reform.

If you’re still not convinced that Medicaid, in conjunction with rules put in place by last year’s health care overhaul, is wrecking state budgets, a reported piece in this morning’s Wall Street Journal is here to remind you once again.

Suderman briefly explains Medicaid is busting state budgets: Federal matching funds to states encourage eligibility expansion. More people qualify because of recession, but tax revenues are also down.  Even Democrat governors are looking to limit eligibility.

Read the whole post: The Medicaid Wrecking Ball.

For more, read up on how to reform Medicaid in Colorado.

Washington’s control of medicine has grown slowly, evolving piecemeal over decades. Even before ObamaCare, half of all heath care spending was controlled by the government.

The general pattern of the expansion works like this: advocates point to some group in real or alleged dire need and declare that Washington has a duty to act; Washington eventually does. It started with the poor (Medicaid) and the elderly (Medicare). Then came the uninsured in need of emergency care (Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act). Then came middle-class parents (S-CHIP).

And ObamaCare? It was sold to us, in large part, as the indispensible means of addressing the plight of those with preexisting conditions.

Read the whole article: The Road To Socialized Medicine Is Paved With Pre-existing Conditions.

(Via Voices for Reason.)

In Colorado, the cost-shift from the uninsured is just $85 per insured person. This is according to research done for Colorado’s 208 Commission, which Dr. Calonge himself praises.

Key findings include that “the uninsured pay for about half of their care out-of-pocket” while only “20 percent is uncompensated care from providers.” An Urban Institute study provides further evidence that uninsured cost-shifting is small — at most “only 1.7% of private insurance premiums.”

By outlawing affordable plans, mandatory insurance increases premiums by much more. Consider the federal health control bill, HR 3590. It requires that all plans include at least ten mandated benefits, such as maternity care and substance abuse treatment, whether you want them or not. A typical mandated benefit increases premiums by about 0.75%, concludes a 2008 MIT study.

By underpaying doctors, Medicaid is also guilty of large cost-shifting. But Dr. Calonge withholds this information when noting that HR 3590 expands Medicaid eligibility. A Milliman actuarial study concluded that the cost-shift from Medicaid and Medicare adds $1788 to the annual insurance premium for a family of four. The uninsured pay more of their medical bills than Medicaid does for its participants, reported Reuters in 2008. What’s more, a CDC study found that people “with Medicaid coverage were more likely to have had multiple visits to [emergency departments] … than those with private insurance and the uninsured.”

Dr. Calonge wants to “promote an honest debate” about health care. But the cost-shift argument for mandatory insurance has no place in one.

This letter to the editor was published in the Northern Colorado Business Report on December 3, 2010.

This is a shorter version of my article, Amendment 63 vs. Cost-Shift Hypocrisy, published in the Huffington Post.