Post by agito on Aug 21, 2008 12:06:21 GMT -6
Paul Howard on using the free market to fix health care in america. original article here
If you’re not depressed about America’s “private” health-care system, you’re probably living in a cave somewhere in the Rockies. The bad news seems neverending: health-care costs keep going up, insurance coverage keeps going down, and routine errors — from deadly hospital infections to drug mix-ups — plague the system.
I’m sure he’s going to spin this to his advantage… wait for it….
For all of America’s vaunted innovation — we lead the world in creating new drugs and devices that fight disease and save lives — health care is extraordinarily expensive, and quality can be maddeningly uneven. Americans, normally cheerful capitalists, can be forgiven for thinking that government should step in and fix the mess.
That would be a mistake.
As if the past 30 years of healthcare wasn’t- but hey- I was ripped off by 3 different Cheerful Capitalists today alone, please… DO go on.
After all, government helped create much of the mess to begin with.
Who created the other part? Can we focus on them? I mean,… I suppose we could get rid of government…
The tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, which dates back to World War II, leads employees to choose plans with high premiums (paid with pre-tax dollars), but low deductibles for routine care, driving up health-care costs.
Got it – tax incentives are bad- maybe we shouldn’t use them as a catalyst to improve the economy? Aka- tax cuts...
Medicare pays for quantity of care, not quality — leading to massive spending disparities in care for chronically ill patients across the country; data from Dartmouth researchers shows that more money doesn’t translate into better care.
Indeed- after all, Americans pay more for healthcare than people in countries with socialized healthcare, but live a shorter lifespan then they do.
Meanwhile, other state and federal regulations strangle innovation and discourage competition.
Screenshots or it didn’t happen- link please to these “regulations”.
The solution is to make health care much more like other sectors of the economy, where competition drives entrepreneurs to offer a wide range of affordable products and services to consumers
Yeay! Panacea time
— like $300 laptops,
that are outdated in 2 years- would you like your hemorrhage cured by a leach sir?
cut-rate vacation packages sold online,
careful- first anti-septic is on the house, from there it’s paygo. services good for only 2 weeks out of the year
and discount brokerage firms.
Sure- half the cost, but 1/10th the service. We can give you the needle and thread, but you are on your own for the stitches
To unleash a new wave of entrepreneurial energy in health care, policymakers should focus on a four-point plan of action:
Deceive, discount, deflect, deny?
Play fair in health care .. deceive?
Imagine charging low-income Americans more for health insurance. Outraged yet? We already do that. The tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance favors higher-income workers, who get a bigger deduction and are more likely to work at firms that offer insurance. Low-income Americans working at jobs that don’t offer insurance end up paying much more for their insurance out of pocket — if they can even afford it. The tax penalty against individually purchased health insurance (30 percent or more, depending on income) is regressive and unfair. Agreed! This is bad
A tax deduction or tax credit for everyone who purchases their own health plans would be much more equitable, giving millions of uninsured access to insurance.
“millions” as in 3 million or “millions” as in 47 million? Some perspective: people are pitching a fit about gasoline prices- at an increase of .. what was it- 25% (nice ballpark figure). Assume a 20000 mile average yearly driving distance, and that the jump in prices was from 3.25 to 4.06 (81c) assuming 20mpg national average- that’s $810. The average health insurance package is $4000. We can’t get a subsidy to lower gas prices, but we can do the same for something that is 4-5 times as expensive?
A risk-adjusted voucher for our poorest, sickest patients (think cancer) would allow them to buy into insurance markets and encourage insurers to seek them out.
“I’m a enterprising health insurance agency, I want to collect this $4000 voucher from this cancer patient so that I can prived $30,000 in services! Next week I’ll run for congress!”
Employers, unions, and other civic groups could act as buying clubs for their members
(they already do… at least for the people employed by companies that offer insurance, or for those few that still work in a union… or “other civic groups”…. Heh, nation of islam is a “civic group” is it not?)
— helping them navigate the system and find the best values.’
For free? Or are we now just passing the buck?
One nation, one market … discount?
A 2007 study from eHealthInsurance found that monthly individual insurance premiums ranged from a low of $98 in Iowa to $338 in New York; the national average was $148. The disparity is partly explained by state regulations (like mandated coverage for chiropractors) that drive up costs. - emphasis mine
Private Universal health insurance- we can fix everything except your back.
It’s time America became one market when it comes to health insurance
So the big boys can dominate the market and reduce our number of choices
— allowing consumers to buy insurance from across state lines.
Blue cross of Nebraska, meet blue cross of Arkansas, (the state in between wasn’t significant)
— Freed from expensive state mandates, insurance would become more affordable
Because that “mandated” service is no longer available! Sorry about your chiropractor going to the unemployment line, and lets not talk about your birth control pills because you don’t have any!
— consumers would have more choices, and companies could target marketing efforts at the uninsured, newly empowered with tax-advantaged dollars.
Tax money going to insurance companies instead of to doctors for genuine services…
Stop being part of the problem .. deflect
Because it’s someone else’s fault anyway
When it looked like retail health-care clinics might open in Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino went ballistic: “Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong.”
And doctors violating the Hippocratic oath is…… still, nice selective use of a quote to infuriate the reader without presenting anything of substance to the incident at hand...
Menino’s kneejerk response is typical of policymakers who think markets and health care can’t mix.
They mix, much to the profits of the health insurance arbiters….
They couldn’t be more wrong. In a recent report from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, researchers found that retail clinics in the U.S. have grown from about 200 in 2006 to over 1,000 this year,
AGAIN- They mix, much to the profits of the health insurance arbiters…. where's the report that said delivery of service actually improved? where's the report that says the percentage of those without health coverage went down?
getting high marks from consumers for convenience and quality of care.
The consumers that could afford it... and what, no numbers for this part of the argument?
Compared with a doctor’s office or ER visit for minor ailments,
“er visits for minor ailments”- READ- patients with no health insurance waiting till the last moment for service
retail clinics offer consumers accessible, high-quality treatments at an affordable price. Deloitte praises the clinics as an innovation whose “potential is profound.”
It’s a cheaper cost to the health insurance industry- but do the savings pass onto the insurance purchaser? Focus on the issue at hand
Retail clinics prove that high-quality care can be delivered by skilled nurse practitioners in non-traditional environments —
Oh fuck- guess I didn’t need my heart by-pass to be performed by that guy with 4 years undergraduate, 3 years medschool, 1 year residency, 1 year specialty. We can get Ms. Jane with her 8month credential in “high quality care” and we’ll all be fine.
but some states, like New York, prohibit the “corporate practice of medicine” (which limits the ability of for-profit companies to employ health care professionals) or try to slap retail clinics with restrictive regulations that drive up costs.
And/or encourage safety. Lead scalpels from china anyone?
State “certificate of need” laws also prohibit competitors from challenging local hospital monopolies with higher quality or more affordable services. Rather than stifling innovation and competition to protect existing providers (like nonprofit hospitals), policymakers should throw out their old assumptions and find new ways to encourage choice and competition in health-care markets.
Blah- a hard one. Here’s the deal, for every patient not served by the “non-profit,” the expenses at the hospital go up in relation to those that are treated. Which in turn means fewer people treated there. So as more and more people can’t be treated by the non- profit, the costs of the non-profit spiral up. Then- those few patients that can afford it, put more demand on the "for-profit" sector, and costs go up there as well.
The feds need to lead by example ...deny?
Would you rent a television for $7,000 over three years if you could buy it for a tenth that price? No? Well, Medicare would. Medicare pays fixed prices for Durable Medical Equipment, set by 1980s-era regulations. According to HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, Medicare rents an oxygen concentrator at the price quoted above — with Medicare patients shelling out a 20-percent co-payment for the rental ($1,418) — that it could buy outright for only $600. When Medicare was set to implement a competitive bidding program for DME last month, Congress killed it.
Yeah- was going to say, congress kept medicare from executing negotiating power. Why? Lobbyists. While we are on that track- is there any way from having private companies inflate the costs on us? Oh wait- that would require the collective action of the people -> socialism!
Government spending on health care, particularly for Medicare, is out of control and unsustainable. One of the few bright spots is Medicare Part D, where competition and consumer choice for prescription drugs have made the program a success with seniors and saved taxpayers billions of dollars.
It’s also been called socialized pharmacy by those on the right.
If Congress is serious about lowering health-care costs and sustaining Medicare for the long haul, it will have to embrace competition and choice throughout the program.
Like gladiators “embracing competition” in the coliseum- choose your opponent, your odds of surviving are 50/50.
The best thing that government can do to “fix” health care is to make it more like other, more competitive sectors of the economy by setting the basic rules
regulations?
for competition and transparency,
How is this different from what we do have now?
policing fraud and corruption,
OMGZ you got sick! You are committing fraud against your policy, /kick… (I think there is a little too much “fraud” policing)
and then getting out of the way and letting markets and consumers decide what works.
I know the market doesn’t like it, but the consumers are saying universal health care works.
This is the formula that explains America’s leadership of the global economy — and it’s a long overdue prescription for health-care reform.
We’ve steamrolled 2 countries on the opposite side of the planet- why the hell can’t we kill roughly %20 of the citizens on the biggest country on earth?
If you’re not depressed about America’s “private” health-care system, you’re probably living in a cave somewhere in the Rockies. The bad news seems neverending: health-care costs keep going up, insurance coverage keeps going down, and routine errors — from deadly hospital infections to drug mix-ups — plague the system.
I’m sure he’s going to spin this to his advantage… wait for it….
For all of America’s vaunted innovation — we lead the world in creating new drugs and devices that fight disease and save lives — health care is extraordinarily expensive, and quality can be maddeningly uneven. Americans, normally cheerful capitalists, can be forgiven for thinking that government should step in and fix the mess.
That would be a mistake.
As if the past 30 years of healthcare wasn’t- but hey- I was ripped off by 3 different Cheerful Capitalists today alone, please… DO go on.
After all, government helped create much of the mess to begin with.
Who created the other part? Can we focus on them? I mean,… I suppose we could get rid of government…
The tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, which dates back to World War II, leads employees to choose plans with high premiums (paid with pre-tax dollars), but low deductibles for routine care, driving up health-care costs.
Got it – tax incentives are bad- maybe we shouldn’t use them as a catalyst to improve the economy? Aka- tax cuts...
Medicare pays for quantity of care, not quality — leading to massive spending disparities in care for chronically ill patients across the country; data from Dartmouth researchers shows that more money doesn’t translate into better care.
Indeed- after all, Americans pay more for healthcare than people in countries with socialized healthcare, but live a shorter lifespan then they do.
Meanwhile, other state and federal regulations strangle innovation and discourage competition.
Screenshots or it didn’t happen- link please to these “regulations”.
The solution is to make health care much more like other sectors of the economy, where competition drives entrepreneurs to offer a wide range of affordable products and services to consumers
Yeay! Panacea time
— like $300 laptops,
that are outdated in 2 years- would you like your hemorrhage cured by a leach sir?
cut-rate vacation packages sold online,
careful- first anti-septic is on the house, from there it’s paygo. services good for only 2 weeks out of the year
and discount brokerage firms.
Sure- half the cost, but 1/10th the service. We can give you the needle and thread, but you are on your own for the stitches
To unleash a new wave of entrepreneurial energy in health care, policymakers should focus on a four-point plan of action:
Deceive, discount, deflect, deny?
Play fair in health care .. deceive?
Imagine charging low-income Americans more for health insurance. Outraged yet? We already do that. The tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance favors higher-income workers, who get a bigger deduction and are more likely to work at firms that offer insurance. Low-income Americans working at jobs that don’t offer insurance end up paying much more for their insurance out of pocket — if they can even afford it. The tax penalty against individually purchased health insurance (30 percent or more, depending on income) is regressive and unfair. Agreed! This is bad
A tax deduction or tax credit for everyone who purchases their own health plans would be much more equitable, giving millions of uninsured access to insurance.
“millions” as in 3 million or “millions” as in 47 million? Some perspective: people are pitching a fit about gasoline prices- at an increase of .. what was it- 25% (nice ballpark figure). Assume a 20000 mile average yearly driving distance, and that the jump in prices was from 3.25 to 4.06 (81c) assuming 20mpg national average- that’s $810. The average health insurance package is $4000. We can’t get a subsidy to lower gas prices, but we can do the same for something that is 4-5 times as expensive?
A risk-adjusted voucher for our poorest, sickest patients (think cancer) would allow them to buy into insurance markets and encourage insurers to seek them out.
“I’m a enterprising health insurance agency, I want to collect this $4000 voucher from this cancer patient so that I can prived $30,000 in services! Next week I’ll run for congress!”
Employers, unions, and other civic groups could act as buying clubs for their members
(they already do… at least for the people employed by companies that offer insurance, or for those few that still work in a union… or “other civic groups”…. Heh, nation of islam is a “civic group” is it not?)
— helping them navigate the system and find the best values.’
For free? Or are we now just passing the buck?
One nation, one market … discount?
A 2007 study from eHealthInsurance found that monthly individual insurance premiums ranged from a low of $98 in Iowa to $338 in New York; the national average was $148. The disparity is partly explained by state regulations (like mandated coverage for chiropractors) that drive up costs. - emphasis mine
Private Universal health insurance- we can fix everything except your back.
It’s time America became one market when it comes to health insurance
So the big boys can dominate the market and reduce our number of choices
— allowing consumers to buy insurance from across state lines.
Blue cross of Nebraska, meet blue cross of Arkansas, (the state in between wasn’t significant)
— Freed from expensive state mandates, insurance would become more affordable
Because that “mandated” service is no longer available! Sorry about your chiropractor going to the unemployment line, and lets not talk about your birth control pills because you don’t have any!
— consumers would have more choices, and companies could target marketing efforts at the uninsured, newly empowered with tax-advantaged dollars.
Tax money going to insurance companies instead of to doctors for genuine services…
Stop being part of the problem .. deflect
Because it’s someone else’s fault anyway
When it looked like retail health-care clinics might open in Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino went ballistic: “Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong.”
And doctors violating the Hippocratic oath is…… still, nice selective use of a quote to infuriate the reader without presenting anything of substance to the incident at hand...
Menino’s kneejerk response is typical of policymakers who think markets and health care can’t mix.
They mix, much to the profits of the health insurance arbiters….
They couldn’t be more wrong. In a recent report from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, researchers found that retail clinics in the U.S. have grown from about 200 in 2006 to over 1,000 this year,
AGAIN- They mix, much to the profits of the health insurance arbiters…. where's the report that said delivery of service actually improved? where's the report that says the percentage of those without health coverage went down?
getting high marks from consumers for convenience and quality of care.
The consumers that could afford it... and what, no numbers for this part of the argument?
Compared with a doctor’s office or ER visit for minor ailments,
“er visits for minor ailments”- READ- patients with no health insurance waiting till the last moment for service
retail clinics offer consumers accessible, high-quality treatments at an affordable price. Deloitte praises the clinics as an innovation whose “potential is profound.”
It’s a cheaper cost to the health insurance industry- but do the savings pass onto the insurance purchaser? Focus on the issue at hand
Retail clinics prove that high-quality care can be delivered by skilled nurse practitioners in non-traditional environments —
Oh fuck- guess I didn’t need my heart by-pass to be performed by that guy with 4 years undergraduate, 3 years medschool, 1 year residency, 1 year specialty. We can get Ms. Jane with her 8month credential in “high quality care” and we’ll all be fine.
but some states, like New York, prohibit the “corporate practice of medicine” (which limits the ability of for-profit companies to employ health care professionals) or try to slap retail clinics with restrictive regulations that drive up costs.
And/or encourage safety. Lead scalpels from china anyone?
State “certificate of need” laws also prohibit competitors from challenging local hospital monopolies with higher quality or more affordable services. Rather than stifling innovation and competition to protect existing providers (like nonprofit hospitals), policymakers should throw out their old assumptions and find new ways to encourage choice and competition in health-care markets.
Blah- a hard one. Here’s the deal, for every patient not served by the “non-profit,” the expenses at the hospital go up in relation to those that are treated. Which in turn means fewer people treated there. So as more and more people can’t be treated by the non- profit, the costs of the non-profit spiral up. Then- those few patients that can afford it, put more demand on the "for-profit" sector, and costs go up there as well.
The feds need to lead by example ...deny?
Would you rent a television for $7,000 over three years if you could buy it for a tenth that price? No? Well, Medicare would. Medicare pays fixed prices for Durable Medical Equipment, set by 1980s-era regulations. According to HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, Medicare rents an oxygen concentrator at the price quoted above — with Medicare patients shelling out a 20-percent co-payment for the rental ($1,418) — that it could buy outright for only $600. When Medicare was set to implement a competitive bidding program for DME last month, Congress killed it.
Yeah- was going to say, congress kept medicare from executing negotiating power. Why? Lobbyists. While we are on that track- is there any way from having private companies inflate the costs on us? Oh wait- that would require the collective action of the people -> socialism!
Government spending on health care, particularly for Medicare, is out of control and unsustainable. One of the few bright spots is Medicare Part D, where competition and consumer choice for prescription drugs have made the program a success with seniors and saved taxpayers billions of dollars.
It’s also been called socialized pharmacy by those on the right.
If Congress is serious about lowering health-care costs and sustaining Medicare for the long haul, it will have to embrace competition and choice throughout the program.
Like gladiators “embracing competition” in the coliseum- choose your opponent, your odds of surviving are 50/50.
The best thing that government can do to “fix” health care is to make it more like other, more competitive sectors of the economy by setting the basic rules
regulations?
for competition and transparency,
How is this different from what we do have now?
policing fraud and corruption,
OMGZ you got sick! You are committing fraud against your policy, /kick… (I think there is a little too much “fraud” policing)
and then getting out of the way and letting markets and consumers decide what works.
I know the market doesn’t like it, but the consumers are saying universal health care works.
This is the formula that explains America’s leadership of the global economy — and it’s a long overdue prescription for health-care reform.
We’ve steamrolled 2 countries on the opposite side of the planet- why the hell can’t we kill roughly %20 of the citizens on the biggest country on earth?