Jonathan Cohn on why Democrats should just impose an unpopular health care bill on Americans:
"And what about making medical care less expensive? The Democrats' approach is to try a combination of approaches: Eliminating waste, redirecting Medicare payments so that they reward efficiency, altering the tax treatment of insurance, and so on. They admit it will take time and that they are not sure which approaches will work best. But these efforts get at the root causes of rising medical costs--not just profit or administrative inefficiency, but also the tendency towards unnecessary over-treatment."
The liberal logic is that unnecessary treatment is at the heart of rising medical costs (conservatives tend to nod in agreement) and that government regulation can change behavior to eliminate "waste." The Torah for the Left in implementing this grand scheme is the Dartmouth Atlas.
But it is increasingly clear that the Dartmouth Atlas is to healthcare reform what the UN Climate Report is to Cap and Trade... a mass of data and assumptions reinforced by people who believe in the same thing but not in actual biological or clinical facts. If anything, the effort to eliminate over treatment will make people sicker and undermine innovation, which is the real source of disease prevention and better health.
Meanwhile, the Left is also willing to gloss over their willingness to shove 15 million people into Medicaid and what the implications of that will be, on top of cuts to Medicare reimbursement on the supply of hospital and physician services. Apparently, it thinks that paying little more than half of the going rate is a good way to eliminate "waste." Does the Left believe that Medicaid delivers great care or can deliver even better care for what it currently pays providers? Yes it does.
Finally, Cohn and others lack the guts to admit they are cutting Medicare to pay for an expansion of Medicaid and a tax break for unions. The "savings" which may not materialize are not plowed back into the system. Oh no, there will be higher taxes for that on top of the new taxes for more expensive, mandated coverage, which -- the President insists -- is only more expensive because people will want to pay more once they can actually get better coverage. So you see people really were never concerned about rising premiums after all, they were just waiting for the government to mandate more expensive health care, raise taxes and limit subsidies to a small portion of Americans. Or more to Cohn's authoritarian purpose, we really shouldn't have a choice because we are too stupid to really appreciate just how great the new health care order will be.
As I have written before, I hope the Left persists in this strategy. It will be decimated at the polls come November and health care reform will be better off for it.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/summited-out?page=0,1&utm_source=TNR%20Daily&utm_campaign=26cab0e92c-TNR_Daily_022610&utm_medium=email
"And what about making medical care less expensive? The Democrats' approach is to try a combination of approaches: Eliminating waste, redirecting Medicare payments so that they reward efficiency, altering the tax treatment of insurance, and so on. They admit it will take time and that they are not sure which approaches will work best. But these efforts get at the root causes of rising medical costs--not just profit or administrative inefficiency, but also the tendency towards unnecessary over-treatment."
The liberal logic is that unnecessary treatment is at the heart of rising medical costs (conservatives tend to nod in agreement) and that government regulation can change behavior to eliminate "waste." The Torah for the Left in implementing this grand scheme is the Dartmouth Atlas.
But it is increasingly clear that the Dartmouth Atlas is to healthcare reform what the UN Climate Report is to Cap and Trade... a mass of data and assumptions reinforced by people who believe in the same thing but not in actual biological or clinical facts. If anything, the effort to eliminate over treatment will make people sicker and undermine innovation, which is the real source of disease prevention and better health.
Meanwhile, the Left is also willing to gloss over their willingness to shove 15 million people into Medicaid and what the implications of that will be, on top of cuts to Medicare reimbursement on the supply of hospital and physician services. Apparently, it thinks that paying little more than half of the going rate is a good way to eliminate "waste." Does the Left believe that Medicaid delivers great care or can deliver even better care for what it currently pays providers? Yes it does.
Finally, Cohn and others lack the guts to admit they are cutting Medicare to pay for an expansion of Medicaid and a tax break for unions. The "savings" which may not materialize are not plowed back into the system. Oh no, there will be higher taxes for that on top of the new taxes for more expensive, mandated coverage, which -- the President insists -- is only more expensive because people will want to pay more once they can actually get better coverage. So you see people really were never concerned about rising premiums after all, they were just waiting for the government to mandate more expensive health care, raise taxes and limit subsidies to a small portion of Americans. Or more to Cohn's authoritarian purpose, we really shouldn't have a choice because we are too stupid to really appreciate just how great the new health care order will be.
As I have written before, I hope the Left persists in this strategy. It will be decimated at the polls come November and health care reform will be better off for it.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/summited-out?page=0,1&utm_source=TNR%20Daily&utm_campaign=26cab0e92c-TNR_Daily_022610&utm_medium=email
