Harper, who I have previously described as a “bold agent of change” like Gov. Daniels, was playing doctor with her dolls. I think she has a free market solution to rising health care costs. Coupons!
Masson's Blog
Harper, who I have previously described as a “bold agent of change” like Gov. Daniels, was playing doctor with her dolls. I think she has a free market solution to rising health care costs. Coupons!
SIR, I BELIEVE YOUR CHILD MAY BE A SOCIALIST.
Certainly she will be when that Nazi Communist Barack Obama gets done with his plot to speak to our school children! I hear the President is going to perform an on-camera, late term abortion. Somehow this will turn them into minions of ACORN. Or so I’ve heard.
Don’t even go there! St. Vincents Hospital in Indianapolis is advertising on TV “HeartScans” for only $99. I’m not really sure what a HeartScan” is but the price certainly seems reasonable. Now if Community Hospital East offers a HeartScan for $89.99 in a Labor Day Sale, I might consider it…
Wilson, everyone already knows you’re a heartless godless atheist socialst fascist Nazi.. why would you need a HEART scan?
*SNARK*
At least she’s not proposing to use money that grows on trees– or to propose a fairy-tale like expansion of coverage without higher costs or more rationing. Good for her!
How have the other countries done it — cover more people for less money and manage lower infant fatalities and longer life expectancy in the process? They just smarter than us? Better administrators? More capable doctors? Or have they just implemented a more effective system?
Did you read Chris of Rights comment on your other post?
In any case, the questions are will more/less govt be better? And if more govt is assumed to be better, why not try it at the state level– as other similar countries/populations have (supposedly) had success?
And you agree with me about your daughter’s comments, right? A lot of politicians haven’t advanced that far!
And I still haven’t heard a plausible explanation for why other countries are spending less and getting more. Do you disagree that they spend less? Do you disagree that they are getting better results?
Why not use the states? Smaller purchasing pools, less leverage, and greater risk of arbitrage.
One reason we are spending so much on healthcare is the overhead of our third-party reimbursement system. If you were to figure out what each state spends on the administrative costs of Medicaid, where eligibility changes monthly, and the corresponding burden on providers to verify eligibility, track spend-down amounts, etc. you would get a hint of the waste. Then with 1500 commercial insurers, with benefits varying by employer and plan, and networks which may or may not include the provider you want to see, and the cost of every provider negotiating contracts with each insurer, network, plan, then monitoring the accuracy of payments according to each contract, and maintaining separate provider identification and credential information for each insurer, state medicaid, S-CHIP, and special coverage program, then billing the patient for the rejected or non-covered amounts, you will see why we spend 30% of out healthcare dollars on administrative costs. If there were a single risk pool and a single provider network, everyone included, most of that would go away.
And in case anyone is wondering why the baby is taped to construction paper with tape on her forehead, it’s because she likes it. (So says Harper.)
There would be no significant gains in economies of scale from a larger pool. (Why do you imagine that there would be?) A far more important issue is mandated coverage of certain services and limited competition over state lines.
Even if there are lower costs with similar services, it’s with a far different population in terms of style, size and lifestyles. In any case, the bottom line is the two questions I asked above. Without good answers, a single federal experiment is an unnecessary risk with tremendous downside.
Recent studies indicate that 60% of all bankrupticies are the result of medical costs. Is that enough of a “downside” for Mr. Schansberg? Probably not.
Craig –
Link? I recall seeing some debunking of that figure, but cannot locate it off hand.
If I recall correctly, the figure was thought to be biased by the inclusion of anyone filing bankruptcy who mentioned any significant medical expense, and the threshold for significant was not particularly high.
Craig, aside from the validity of the statistic (I have no idea), you’re focused on one of the many agreed-upon problems with our current health care “system”– which is a dog’s breakfast of market forces and significant government intervention.
So, back to my two questions…
Actually you are mistaken, Craig.
http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343%2809%2900404-5/abstract
The AMA shows that Health care related bankruptcies have increased from 46.2% in 2001 to 62.1% in 2007, with $5,000 the threshold for minimum medical expense. For many (I would speculate most) American families, an unexpected $5,000 expense is significant.
More striking than the actual number is the rate of growth – and that rate of growth was pre-recession, which began in Q4 2007.
MarcDukes –
Some folks question that particular study (conflict – what a surprise!)
Here’s a roundup from the wingnut side, for the moonbat’s delectation:
http://www.americanissuesproject.org/blogs/columns/archive/2009/09/01/beware-of-the-bogus-us-health-care-bashing-studies.aspx
Parker – thanks for the link. I read the arguments against this study and I don’t think they actually debunked anything.
There were two basic arguments between McArdle and Goodman.
1. That $5,000 is too low a threshold for medical bills to consider a medical bankruptcy. The actual example is that if Trump filed BK, then $5k would be a joke.
2. That BKs fell by half over that period.
On the first point – median household income in the US is $50,233 according to the Census Bureau. In this regard, I think the threshold is reasonable. The CBO has an effective tax rate for the middle quintile of taxpaers at around 14%. So the $50k is really $43,200. Subtract state taxes, FICA, medicare, etc… and you are probably under $40,000. Since that is a median number, it means that half of all HHs earn less than that. The CBO also has minimum adjusted income for the top 10% starting at $92,000 in 2005. So clearly, a $5,000 threshold is reasonable for probably 80%+ of all Americans. In essence, the Trump argument is a red herring.
On the second point – the total number of BKs is relevant in that it actually supports the case that medical BKs are significant. If total BKs are shrinking, while the percentage of medical BKs is rising, then the medical BKs are not shrinking nearly as quickly, if at all. This is significant in that it proves that as the economy grew and BKs shrunk, BKs due to medical expenses didn’t. It illustrates that regardless of the economy as a whole, medical expenses are a backbreaker for a number of Americans. McArdle misses the point of the whole argument by looking at mathematical drivers of the ratio and ignoring the actual cause and social implications of those mathematical drivers.
On an anecdotal note, I work at a bank in consumer finance. I have analyzed internal data on BKs, and while I don’t have an actual percentage at hand (we don’t look at single drivers, but are more concerned with recovering funds) I can tell you that a large number of the BKs we see are absolutely driven by medical expenses. Rarely is it solely medicals, but they are a significant component. Take it for what it is worth – I don’t have the data here, and even if I did I couldn’t really publish it.