I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. - Thomas Jefferson

HealthcareOrama

by Hal_10000

This past week, we’ve seen tons of commentary on the Obamacare plans filtering through sources.  There’s been too much goodness to post it all, but I thought I’d give some highlights with my own commentary.

First, Obama has long claimed that all Americans will have the same insurance Congress does.  This statement should have gotten him laughed off the stage as Congress gets a healthcare package that is unbelievable generous (and expensive).  Today, Betsy McCaughey puts the lie to that claim:

This legislation—the Affordable Health Choices Act that’s being drafted by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s staff and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee—will push Americans into stingy insurance plans with tight, HMO-style controls. It specifically exempts members of Congress (along with federal employees; the exemptions are in section 3116).

Some time ago, I wrote a very long piece on my own site debunking the idea that America’s healthcare system isn’t as good as those in other countries.  Today, Gary Becker adds:

To get around such problems, some analysts compare not life expectancies but survival rates from different diseases. The US health system tends to look pretty good on these comparisons.

A study published in Lancet Oncology in 2007 calculates cancer survival rates for both men and women in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union as a whole. The study claims that the most important determinants of cancer survival are early diagnosis, early treatment, and access to the best drugs, and that the United States does very well on all three criteria. Early diagnosis helps survival, but it may also distort the comparisons of five or even ten-year survival rates. In any case, the calculated five-year survival rates are much better in the US: they are about 65% for both men and women, while they are much lower in the other countries, especially for men.

In other words, the system is doing pretty well for having to take care of a bunch of fat drunks who think operating the remote constitutes exercise.

Shikha Dalmia rips up the notion that Medicare is vastly superior to the private sector, a point I also blogged on.

Medicare hasn’t controlled costs by discovering some wonder drug to deliver new efficiencies that the private sector doesn’t have. In fact, the Government Accountability Office lists Medicare as a “high-risk” program, thanks to its long-term financial problems and its vulnerability to fraud. Rather, Medicare has cut costs by deploying the economic equivalent of leech-therapy: slashing payments to providers. The only reason providers haven’t been bled out of existence is because they have offset these cuts by raising prices charged to private insurance plans. In effect, then, the good performance of Medicare that Obama and Co. tout has been purchased by beggaring the private plans that they deride.

As I’ve noted many times, doctor are opting out of Medicare precisely because its pay schedule stinks (fees for practices I worked in have gone up less than 20% in the last 25 years).  The Kennedy plan would force all doctors to participate and accept fees close to those of Medicare.  That would basically force doctors out of existence.  I suppose that’s one way to cut costs.

The other day, Cato’s Michael Tanner called the Obama plan “Fannie Med”, as appropriate a comparison as I can think of.  The more we learn about this, the more it looks like unadulterated snake oil—a wild appeal to the magical power of government to cut costs, increase coverage, improve care and get us all a date with Megan Fox.

Fortunately, many Americans aren’t buying (scroll down to the healthcare section).  I’m almost hopeful.  If Obama can’t sell this snake oil to Americans, no one can.

Comments

Posted by Sean Galbraith on 06/19/09 at 01:06 PM from

I wouldn’t say the US healthcare system isn’t as good as what is available in other countries. For many metrics it is as good or better. But for different metrics, it isn’t as good. The problem is that for a system as large and as complicated as “health care” there can never be one true metric as a baseline. It is a reasonable question, however, to ask if the system generally, based on its cost, is providing a reasonable return on investment. In that case, I would say the US system is flawed. Every other G7 country (save for maybe the UK), provides and overall comparable level of care as the US, but does it for a far, far lower cost. So for overall a comparable level of care, what does your extra cost buy you? The US system is essentially a giant make work program for the insurance industry that is staggeringly inefficient.

Though I favour single-payer/Universal Health Care I agree that there is no chance for Obama’s plan to succeed. Bandaids won’t work to solve a femoral artery gash. The system would need to be completely redesigned from the ground up, which will never happen in the US.

Posted by Sean Galbraith on 06/19/09 at 01:32 PM from

Not to mention, there are likely more than enough savings to be had in the US system, if regional costs could be better controlled.

Posted by on 06/20/09 at 11:35 AM from

Here’s my take: The US health system can both not afford to be changed, and cannot afford not to be changed. 

I wonder what it will be?

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