Obama’s troubles with healthcare
– Peter Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School, and the former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. The views expressed are his own. –
Healthcare reform is in trouble, because President Obama and congressional leaders are not adequately addressing issues that trouble many Americans.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius caution Americans to ignore terrorist claims about death panels. Reasonable enough—unseemly critics on both the right and the left seek to stir up unwarranted hysteria.
Sebelius defends end of life counseling from physicians as a benefit families need when facing difficult treatment choices for elderly relatives. However, what worries people is such counseling in the context of government rationing.
All health insurers ration care—private insurers in the United States and government-run health services in Canada and Europe face tough choices and limited resources. U.S private insurers generally don’t deny or delay critical care that could cause death—officials implementing such a policy would land in jail.
Foreign public systems are noted for long waits for specialists and critical procedures like hip replacements and bypass surgery. In Sweden, for example, delays result in suffering and deaths that would not occur in the expensive, but more humane, U.S. system. No one is held accountable, the elderly are particularly vulnerable, and that is euthanasia, de facto if not de jure.
President Obama promises Americans they won’t lose private health insurance if they want to keep it. However, legislation moving through the House requires businesses to pay an 8 percent payroll tax if they don’t provide healthcare and creates a government-run alternative to private insurance. Moderate senators would like to create non-profit cooperatives instead but to gain support from liberals in Congress, those non-profits would operate much like government agencies.
The three urban myths of healthcare reform
– Peter J. Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former FDA associate commissioner. The views expressed are his own. –
When it comes to healthcare reform, as Aldous Huxley said, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
Three of the most common “urban myths” of American healthcare are that: 1. The lower life expectancy in the U.S. “proves” the total inadequacy of our system; 2. There are 47 million uninsured Americans — proving the inequity of our system; and 3. We spend “too much” on health care — proving the wastefulness of our system.
As the Ol Perfessor used to say, “Let’s look at the numbers.”
1. Lower Life Expectancy: According to N. Gregory Mankiw, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, “The United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, which has national health insurance.”
This fact, according to Mankiw, is often taken as evidence for the inadequacy of the U.S. health system. But a recent study by June and Dave O’Neill, economists at Baruch College, from whom these numbers come, shows that the difference in health outcomes has more to do with broader social forces.
Americans are more likely than Canadians to die by accident or by homicide. For men in their 20s, mortality rates are more than 50 percent higher in the United States than in Canada, and the O’Neills show that accidents and homicides account for most of that gap. Maybe these differences have lessons for traffic laws and gun control, but they teach nothing about the U.S. system of health care.
I can’t believe what I am reading here. Nobody seems to have a solid grasp of the problem so the solution has escaped you.
Read some of the following articles:
How to Make Healthcare Cheaper — http://ablursspot.blogspot.com/2007/11/h ow-to-make-health-care-cheaper.html
Understanding the Healthcare Debate — http://ablursspot.blogspot.com/2009/07/u nderstanding-healthcare-debate.html
Watch a simple video that adds to the discussion Here — http://ablursspot.blogspot.com/2009/09/w hat-does-healthcare-really-cost.html
Healthcare is a big issue that needs careful thought and consideration. It also needs to be adaptable and fitting for the user. Government one size fits all approach isn’t going to cut it. Look over all the real issues and then tell your congressmen to to fix what needs fixing.
Did the GOP capitulate on healthcare?
– James Pethokoukis is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –
You can’t beat something with nothing” often passes for political wisdom in Washington. In 1994, Republicans defeated Bill and Hillary Clinton’s healthcare reform plan with pretty much nothing — well, at least with nothing positive.
Republican congressional solidarity, along with help from business group attack ads and the Clintons’ own political miscues, were enough to doom the landmark legislative effort. Back then, “No” was sufficient.
But 2009 is not 1994. A “Just say no” strategy seem laughably insufficient this time around. Economic anxieties are much higher, the Democrat president more popular, the Democrat-controlled Congress more committed and aggressive.
Want even more evidence of the changed economic and political landscape?
Just take a look at the 248-page Patients Choice Act, a comprehensive GOP healthcare reform plan drafted by Senators Tom Coburn and Richard Burr, and Representatives Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes.
A big feature of the plan calls for redirecting the $300 billion-a-year tax exclusion for employer-based health benefits into refundable tax credits to purchase private plans.
The real reason healthcare is so expensive is because healthcare companies decided that we should pay more to increase their shareholder value and executive pay. How can so many of these companies tell us that over the past years that healthcare costs would climb anywhere from 7% – 17% and then have their stock prices soar from less than $10 per share to some as close as $100 per share? It’s quite obvious where the money went. Look at UnitedHealth Group Inc. Chairman and CEO William McGuire’s 2006 compensation. He received $1.6 billion in unexercised stock options. The Wall Street Journal reported that the timing of McGuire’s stock options, when UnitedHealth stock was at its lowest so he would benefit as much as possible raised the possibility that they had been backdated. UnitedHealth Group’s medical loss ratio for 2005 was 78.6%. That means that UnitedHealth retained for its own intrinsic uses, including profits, 21.4% of premiums paid. Profit for 2005 was $3.3 billion. For that performance, CEO McGuire receives $1.6 billion in unexercised stock options. Take a look at other healthcare stock prices and executive compensation and you’ll see the same pattern.
Prof Morici is ignoring the real facts that the process is being blocked by every Republican in Washington. Also all the conservative radio hosts are daily condemning anything Obama is trying to do to help the country.
The system won’t be perfect. The businesses should get all employees into the public option. It is cheaper and easier for them to do that. The public option is necessary.
Other factors are changing the system from fee per procedure and emphasis on preventive healthcare.
End of life is an arguing point. The reality is senior face this every day. What to do-go to nursing home and suffer neglect and abuse, stay at home and get worse health,opt for some type of assisted suicide if terminally ill, and all related to finances.