November 06, 2009

Trenchant analysis

I mean that in a good way. In a blog post asking "What's Going on in the House?" Ezra Klein says:

Democrats don't expect a single Republican to cross over to vote for health-care reform. That is to say, the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, which got eight Republican votes for what amounted to a tax on dirty energy paired with a bazillion (approximately) regulations on energy producers, was more bipartisan than an incrementalist health-care reform bill.

As Ezra says, "Amazing, huh?"

I really don't understand the opposition to health care reform. Does anyone really believe that the system as it currently exists is fair to all citizens of this country? The way it works now, rather than "All Men are Created Equal" we've got "He Who's Got the Gold Makes the Rules."

Yet there were several thousand Americans milling around the Capitol grounds in DC yesterday protesting attempts to make the system more fair. And, irony of ironies:

By the time it was over, medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care.
In their world, those five people shouldn't have been treated, I guess. I wonder if any of the five objected to the care they were being given?

Posted by Linkmeister at November 6, 2009 11:25 AM | TrackBack
Comments

The opposition, Steve, is that what is being proposed -- a moving target to be sure -- retains the worst misfeatures of the current system (third-party pays, which ramps up utilization and costs -- and surprise, costs are high!) while adding on the additional layer of yet another entitlement at a time when it's painfully obvious that the existing Medicare system is heading for insolvency. It is that the proponents of these various kinds of "reform" simply want to ignore second-order effects. The results in Hawaii (state-run insurance destroyed the market for private insurance, up to the point the state plan was discontinued for want of funds) and continues to happen in Massachusetts (fewer people there are now insured than when the program started, and the thing *still* costs a bundle) are for some reason off-limits. And when anybody does raise these points (John Mackey of Whole Foods, for instance) he gets shouted down as though he were slaughtering kittens for wholesale distribution.

The proponents of government-run health care refuse to admit the fact that other state-run systems, whether the UK's NHS or Canadian single-payer system, also fail to contain cost *growth*, which is ultimately what will unhinge them all, just as we're having a crisis in this country. Yes, our cost growth is faster than others', but the difference is far less than is commonly understood.

In short, this is a problem of economics. The proponents of single-payer want to ignore it, and hand it off to the government, which they claim will magically somehow fix these problems. This is a fantasy, a case of magical thinking that cannot (and real-world experience shows will not) work.

Posted by: Rob McMillin at November 7, 2009 09:45 PM

Rob, it's not an entitlement. The plan that passed pays for itself. So says the CBO.

I don't know what you mean by this: "The results in Hawaii (state-run insurance destroyed the market for private insurance, up to the point the state plan was discontinued for want of funds)"

There is a small state-run plan called QUEST. There are half-a-dozen private insurers, and they're guaranteed a market by virtue of the state's law that all employers must provide health insurance coverage to anyone who works more than 20 hrs/week. I pay one of those companies $350/month. The vast majority of the state's citizens are customers of one of those private companies.

The cost of medical services continues to rise, but the cost of premiums doesn't have to rise as quickly. Like all insurance plans, the more parties in the pool, the lower the rates. This plan adds a lot more parties to the pool.

Posted by: Linkmeister at November 8, 2009 08:04 AM