James Pethokoukis
Political Risk
China questions costs of U.S. healthcare reform
Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.
Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade.
Nothing happening in Washington today should give Beijing any comfort or confidence about what may happen tomorrow. Healthcare reform was originally promoted as a way to “bend the curve” on escalating entitlement costs, the major part of which is financing Medicare and Medicaid. That is looking more and more like an overpromised deliverable.
For instance, a new study from the U.S. government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finds that the healthcare reform bill recently passed in the House of Representatives would increase healthcare spending to 21.3 percent of GDP by 2019 compared with 20.8 percent under current law. That’s bending the curve the wrong way. The study also questions the “long-term viability” of the $500 billion in Medicare cuts meant to help pay for expanded insurance coverage.
In addition, the CMS study gives a clearer cost estimate than the one provided by the Congressional Budget Office. According to the CBO, the 10-year cost of PelosiCare is $894 billion. But that analysis includes early years with little government spending, According to the CMS, the House approach would cost $1 trillion from 2013-2019, or some $140 billion a year when fully put into effect.
Few realists in Washington think any of the current reform plans make a significant dent in the long-term healthcare cost to government. Indeed, the Senate Budget Committee recently held hearing about creating a bipartisan commission to find solutions to America’s entitlements problems.
If healthcare reform really bent the curve, there would be a no need for such a commission to do Healthcare Reform 2.0.
The Chinese might want to keep up the questioning.
Comments RSSPost Your Comment
- We moderate all comments and will publish everything that advances the story directly or with relevant tangential information
- We try not to publish comments that we think are offensive or appear to pass you off as another person, and we will be conservative if comments may be considered libelous.
-
Search
-
Follow James Pethokoukis
This bill focuses on the short term. Attempting to lower the cost of health care for unhealthy Americans.No investment is funding the prevention of disease, making Americans healthier, and lower the need for healthcare and medications. In schools we are no tought how to be healthy and it shows in our citizens. If we are going to spend a trillion dollars it should be spent educating the public about the need for proper nutrition, exercise and sleep. That is a nobel long term goal and will reduce the long term need for “health” care. I have never had medical care and neither has anyone in my family. We have never needed it because we take care of ourselves. OUR HEALTH IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY. We eat all naturals food, exercise everyday and have a regular sleep pattern. I am very healhty without healthcare and I do not want to pay more taxes to pay for lazy people who didn’t take care of themselves or their family.Self care not health care!
[...] James Pethokoukis » Blog Archive » China questions costs of U.S. … [...]
[...] James Pethokoukis » Blog Archive » China questions costs of U.S. … [...]
Here’s an idea that may appeal to conservatives and liberals alike
Let’s start letting Americans opt to have medical treatment in foreign countries.
Right now only a few insurance companies will pay for procedures done overseas.
This forces all of us to use the American Medical system. And at $10,000 a day for a stay in a US hospital, it doesn’t take a mathmatician to figure out why health care is so expensive in the US
Like many Americans , who are older and self employed, I can only afford catastrophic health insurance. My Blue shield plan costs my wife and I $920 a month and has an $8000 deductible.
About 4-5 years ago we found a great solution.
Thailand!!
Like India, Costa Rica, Singapor and Malaysia, Thailand is trying to attract overseas patients who are priced out of their own medical system.
We went over there for complete physicals…to start.(1/10 the cost of the same procedures in the US: ultrasound, X rays, stress tests, EKG, colonoscopies, blood work etc.). We were paying about $240 to get $2400 worth of tests done.
Add $1000 for roundtrip airfare and $150 for a couple nights stay in a nice hotel (or you can stay in a hospital room for about the same amount)…we saved $1200.
In subsequent years we added dental work…also a fraction of the cost.
And last year I went there for my first every operation in a foreign hospital.
The operation on my throat was a success. Best of all….I saved thousands of dollars.
When my wife’s pacemaker replacement is due we plan to have it done in Thailand.
Recently I had to go to my local dentist in California for a toothache. He looked at my records and commented that I hadn’t been in to see him for 4 years.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the only reason he was seeing me now because it was an emergency.
Rather than try to change the system, let’s let competition drive costs down.
As more and more people seek medical care overseas, Doctors, hospitals and drug manufacturers will have to bring down costs here in order to attract patients.
If they don’t, they’ll all have to fight over a shrinking pool of customers.
And insurance companies will love it because they won’t have to pay the outrageous medical bills for US medical care.
Ah! I’m so glad this was poste| There is quite a bit of contradictary
info blogged about, this dispells, puts to rest
much of what I’ve heard.
There is a unity lost between Governing Parties that is needed to help the people feel secure. The moral building block for Health Care.
To see the true Health Care Tax forum you must stop thinking in 3-D,This multi tax forum is against a $100 Trillion Dollar system.. …
To force pay into another system of failures within Health Care Insurance Groups.
This economy will not balance with this concept of a tax forum against the Health Care System. The issue of how to force pay into this system of Health Care may have worked but I am still troubled over the progressive tax forum within this Bill. It covers so many items and Countries that it only forces the system to adjust itself. In some areas, increases against the people and the troubled economy, and in other areas, less effects will be felt.
But this is my big problem, Government Officials seek help and they are to proud to ask us, “the true working force of Government.” It is understandable they have failed the People and within the United States Of America all we ask is to see us as who we are and not try to bring us into this world of the intellectual. I guess our Prime Directive is that of Star Trek, so it must be understood that for millions of people we are just as happy as can be making $13.00 per hour and we have no interest in this world of politics, and how to be a Enstine. Government Officials must understand that there is a level of people within different parts of this Country, that seek to be only that they find to make them happy.
As for this economy well, it is said that the U.S.A. Arms Division has created enough arsenal to destroy every last creature in the world 2 times over,built with tax dollars. This would be funny if not for the irony of it. And now as time has passed Government Officials keep failing. Before 9/11 all the way to today.
As it is in a world of a system, when employees continue to fail, one or two things happen, one; you get fired, two; if you see into a person a good, then it is political correct to implement a penalty or roll back in pay. But this implement of penalty is more favored in the course of action in the Federal Employment World. So how to fix the economy and unite it with the Health Care issue. It would be in the Countries best interest to implement a 10% per cent penalty against every State, County and Government Official within this Matrix of failures. Hey what is that old saying, what is good for the Goose is good for the Gander. I am serous about this, it is past due to show that our Government Officials they have failed, their system failure reaches into this world of warnings that they brush aside as if the information is not worthy noting. From Pearl Harbor to 9/11/2001 to 3/07/2010 of our tax system and Health Care Reform. This 10% per cent penalty should go into the Health Care Forum.
The big problem that Government Officials have is that they have no street credit. President Obama still has some but if he does not take his family and step away from these dueling Parties, that fight over this Health Care Dollar, and stand with Us he will lose all credit from the streets to the county.
President Obama, I would say to you, you have one last chance to regain the hopes and dreams of the American People. To reach out in a concept that states, if there is 250 million people in trouble because of these failures, I would give all my money to them and then I would say to all that I gave money to, “I have no money left, would you all please give me $1.00 back and then I would have $250. million dollars to start all over again.”
As for this $100,trillion dollar in site………….
Results 1 – 10 of about 685,000 for net worth of medicine development industry
Just to show how deep this Health Care Tax split petition reaches. The term split petition is used because of the Tax factor plan that is not seen because of the intent not to show a capital Taxing of close to a $100 trillion dollar package, a yearly system income, not profit…..
Some have stated that I clam to have spiritual in site or something of the sort. I assure you this is not true, so when I state that I asked God to help, it is my way of saying hey Bobby show me how to work on theses Chevy engines. But I do thank you for the consideration. Consider me a cross of Jethro Bodine from the Beverly Hill Billies with my 10th. Grade education and Vin Diesel from the move Pitch Black.
So drop on by and see page 100 at our site and follow the blue pill link
Health Care within a moral value, is to ,
{ GIVE LIFE TO HOPE WHERE THERE IS NONE }
Henry Massingale
FASC Concepts in and for Pay It Forward
http://www.fascmovement.mysite.com on google. yahoo, and Aol.com
please take the time and visit all my new friends on the net and if you wish to post with FASC Concepts you will be most welcomed. So join us and share your ideas as one in one voice.
Well Done! I Like it!
Thank you for sharing this. Well done!
You got a point there. I never thought about it that way.
[...] James Pethokoukis Political Risk: An interesting view about healthcare reform and policy with an analysis of China’s concerns about how reform costs could impact the deficit. [...]
[...] James Pethokoukis » Blog Archive » China questions costs of U.S. … [...]
[...] China questions costs of U.S. healthcare reform (by James Pethokoukis, Reuters, 11/16/09) from → Health Care Reform, Participation in Government, Values & Principles ← Knock, Knock … Last Chance: Earn your 2009 PIG Ribbon → No comments yet Click here to cancel reply. [...]