Heath Care Reform

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Can the Federal Government MANDATE a Service?

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”

(Editor’s Note: What right-wing conservative talk show host, candidate or political figure said this? None of the above. It is a quote from the Congressional Budget Office from 1994 (under the Clinton administration)! This statement is no less dead-on right today than it was then.)

Posted in Heath Care Reform, History, The Constitution | No Responses »

Shortage in MD’s to reach 150,000 (!) by 2025

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

ANOTHER UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF THE HEALTHCARE REFORM LAW?

“The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.” (WSJ, 4.13.10)

(Editor’s note: Here’s yet another case in point (surprise-surprise) of what happens when the government intrudes on a complex, multi-layered private industry and attempts to “improve” its efficiency by taaking it over.)

Posted in Heath Care Reform | No Responses »

“It Will Drive Down Costs…” Says WHO??

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

It’s the Economy, Stupid.

James Carville’s words are as true now as they were in 1992. Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported unemployment was higher in 27 states in February. The national unemployment rate is now at 9.7, up from 8.2 percent a year earlier. Since last year alone, the economy has shed another 3.2 million jobs-all while the President and Democrats on Capitol Hill focused on the virtues of legislation that increases premiums and raises taxes. There’s not an economist in the whole world who believes a government should raise taxes during a deep recession.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the White House is doing. This new “cost-reducing” law:

Increases Deficits. At $12 trillion, the U.S. debt is the largest it’s ever been-and growing at an astonishing pace. At $940 billion, government-run health care will not only increase the debt, but the rate at which the debt grows.

Reduces Quality. It waters-down the Medicare coverage of 33 million Americans and renders 20% of U.S. hospitals unprofitable because of Medicaid spending cuts. Worse, it encourages employers to cease employer-provided insurance and instead push millions of Americans into poorly administered Medicaid-like plans.

Increases Cost. It raises taxes by $569.2 billion, steals roughly $500 billion from Medicare and robs another $52 billion from Social Security. It increases premiums for individual insurance by 54% and family premiums by $2,100.

Limits Access. It will push an estimated 19 million Americans off their employer-based plan and 11.5 million off Medicare Advantage. It provides 32 million Americans access to doctors, but fails to appropriate any funds for new doctors and hospitals and, even worse, systematically underpays medical providers.

Jeanette Nordstrom
National Center for Policy Analysis
www.ncpa.org

Posted in Heath Care Reform, The Debt | No Responses »

Massachusetts’ Healthcare Prototype Finds Costs Exploding

Monday, March 1st, 2010

THE MASSACHUSETTS “MODEL” MOVES TO PRICE CONTROLS

Natural experiments are rare in politics, but few are as instructive as the prototype for ObamaCare that Massachusetts set in motion in 2006. The bills for “universal coverage” are now coming due, and it appears the state political class is prepared to do lasting damage to one of America’s top-flight health care systems, says the Wall Street Journal.

Last month, Democratic Governor Deval Patrick proposed hard price controls across almost all Massachusetts health care:

State regulators already have the power to cap insurance premiums, which Patrick is activating.
He also filed a bill that would give state regulators the power to review the rates of hospitals, physician groups and some specialty providers.
Those that are deemed too high “shall be presumptively disapproved.”

The administered prices of Medicare and Medicaid already shift costs to private patients while below-cost reimbursement creates balance-sheet havoc among providers. Now the governor wants to import these distortions to save the state’s heavily subsidized insurance program as costs explode, says the Journal.

Ironically, former Governor Mitt Romney (like President Obama) sold this plan as a way to control spending. As with all new entitlements, the rolling cost crisis began almost immediately, says the Journal:

For fiscal 2010 taxpayer costs are $47 million over budget, in part due to the recession, and while the $913 million Patrick requested for 2011 is a 5 percent increase over 2010, spending has grown on average 6.7 percent per year.
Meanwhile, average Massachusetts insurance premiums are now the highest in the nation; since 2006, they’ve climbed at an annual rate of 30 percent in the individual market.
Small business costs have increased by 5.8 percent.
Per capita health spending in Massachusetts is now 27 percent higher than the national average, and 15 percent higher even after adjusting for local wages and academic research grants.

All of this is merely a preview of what the entire country will face if Democrats succeed with their plan to pound ObamaCare into law in anything like its current form. Massachusetts is teaching the country a valuable lesson in how not to reform health care, if only anyone would pay attention, says the Journal.

Source: Editorial, “Back to the ObamaCare Future: The Massachusetts ‘model’ moves to price controls,” Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2010.

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703444804575071294139286892.html