Today Gail Wilensky, who was Medicare administrator under Bush I, tries to explain where we are in a New England Journal article. Since the NEJM is firmly socialist on health care, the article holds no surprises.
The third option is to create a new, more limited bill, which essentially means starting over. This strategy seems unlikely to be acceptable to Democrats, and it’s hard to know whether Republicans really want a new bill, either, though they say they do. In reality, there seems to be little inclination on either side to change the positions already staked out. Republican support has coalesced around two different bills: the Common Sense Health Care Reform and Affordability Act developed by the Republican House leadership last July and the Coburn–Burr Patient Choice Act of 2009 sponsored by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Richard Burr (R-NC) and Congressmen Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA). However, as happens too often with Republicans and health care, neither proposal was pursued with the single-mindedness and passion that characterizes the Democratic pursuit of health care reform.1
That might have something to do do with the fact that nothing is better than any of the Democratic proposals. Will none of these people ever recognize that command economies don’t work ? Health care is an economic system that has been wrecked by perverse incentives and moral hazard for 60 years. There is no reason why employer provided health insurance should be tax exempt. It goes back to World War II and wage and price controls.
Most of these people are bureaucrats who have spent their lives managing other people’s lives, usually poorly. Gail Wilensky was no great shakes as Medicare administrator. The academics who write about this have no experience and are using their own theories of management based on a life on salary with clinic patients arranged for their convenience. They know nothing of paying a staff or rent or running a private practice.
My own preference for some time has been the French system, which uses fee-for-service to control utilization and which requires patients to pay first and be reimbursed later.
The Obama system has no market mechanism to control utilization and is a disaster requiring an intricate command and control system that would make the Soviet Union envious.
Tags: health care, Obama
“Will none of these people ever recognize that command economies don’t work?”
I know it was a rhetorical question… however… the bottom line is that the answer is NONE of “those people” will face the truth and “our side” just doesn’t have the numbers to force intelligent policy making down the throats of the American People circa 2010.
Doc… not to depress you further… but many “usually right thinking” folks out of a population of 300,000,000 plus would voluntarily give up the relic of WW-2 era economics you refer to in citing our tax subsidized employer provided bumper-to-bumper health “insurance?”
Health care is an economic system that has been wrecked by perverse incentives and moral hazard for 60 years. There is no reason why employer provided health insurance should be tax exempt. It goes back to World War II and wage and price controls.
Doc… you know this… I know this… maybe – MAYBE a couple million other folks “get” this… but by and large….???
Nope. Stupidity, laziness, and self-interest rule the day, doc. It’s human nature and the Sheeple are going to drag you and I down with them. That’s all there is to it.
“My own preference for some time has been the French system…”
Yeah, yeah, yeah… you’re right – but it AIN’T gonna happen doc.
My preference… hmm… perhaps instead of the “French system” we should be contemplating the “French Revolution.”
(*GRIN*)
BILL