It’s time to propose some.
Yes, I think it’s ripe now, thanks to the monumental cluster effery of the administration.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Republicans next strategy to kill this monstrosity:
Alexander, the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has a plan for replacing Obamacare. It includes providing governors with more flexibility in operating state Medicaid programs, strengthening workplace wellness programs, permitting small businesses to pool their resources and offer lower-cost insurance plans for employees, expanding opportunities for consumers to purchase insurance across state lines and providing greater access to health savings accounts.
Alexander said his plan offers “step-by-step reforms that would reduce the costs of healthcare.”
Alexander isn’t alone in advocating for a process known as “repeal and replace.” The House Republican Study Committee, a conservative group within the GOP caucus, also has offered an Obamacare alternative that it intends to continue pursuing.
“American families and businesses deserve and demand real solutions to the serious problems that exist in our healthcare system,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the committee chairman. “The RSC’s American Health Care Reform Act is a common-sense bill that will lower costs using conservative, free-market solutions which give American families more choices without the unworkable mandates and billions in taxes included in President Obama’s healthcare law.”
The 200-page bill offers $20,000 in tax deductions to families and a $7,500 deduction to individuals to purchase insurance from vendors in any state — thus, supporters say, allowing people to save money by selecting lower-cost providers.
The measure also offers altered proposals to some of the more popular aspects of Obamacare – creation of a $25 billion fund to lower costs for those afflicted with pre-existing conditions, permitting people to carry their insurance from job to job and permitting coverage for adult children up to age 26.
That last remains stupid, regardless of how popular it is.
Report back when one of these bills has actually passed the House, and been scored by the CBO as covering as many people, and reducing the deficit as much as Obamacare.
I believe the CBO has stated that Obamacare has now doubled to 1.8 trillion. Will that help the deficit?
I believe the CBO has stated that Obamacare has now doubled to 1.8 trillion
The CBO said that Obamacare will spend $1.8T from 2014 to 2023 (nothing doubled, they hadn’t previously made a spending forecast for that period).
Will that help the deficit?
Yes, because offsetting that $1.8T in spending you have Obamacare revenue and spending cuts for 2014-2023 that add up to more than $1.8T. Google “cob obamacare deficit impact” for the details.
We have a CBO score for Obamacare; what are the scores for the GOP alternatives?
If you weren’t so stupid, Jim, you’d realize that the CBO is told how to score a bill by the people who wrote the bill. If Obamacare said that every person in the country had to pay a $10,000 a year fee, the CBO would duly report that Obama’s trillion-dollar deficits were magically 2-trillion-dollar surpluses.
CBO scoring means _nothing_, but you’ll never admit that as long as it suits you.
CBO is told how to score a bill by the people who wrote the bill
Then why is it that when the GOP asked the CBO to score their bill to repeal Obamacare, the CBO reported that repeal would increase the deficit? If your theory was correct the CBO would have given the bill authors the score they wanted.
CBO scoring means _nothing_
The only people who think that are people who don’t like the CBO score they got. Everybody hates the referees, but you can’t have a fair game without them.
“The only people who think that are people who don’t like the CBO score they got. ”
Except when the CBO says something you don’t like, suddenly you don’t like the CBO either. You are rather inconsistent in your defense.
And if the CBO is so great then why did the Obama administration withhold releasing reports prior to voting on Obamacare? Same reason his administration withheld the IRS IG report of ongoing illegal conduct during the election. Maybe we should be more skeptical about what this administration tells us considering their manipulation of the reporting process?
The CBO said that Obamacare will spend $1.8T from 2014 to 2023 (nothing doubled, they hadn’t previously made a spending forecast for that period).
Wrong, Obama himself said the program would cost no more than 900 billion.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-a-Joint-Session-of-Congress-on-Health-Care
Relevant part:
Now, add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years — less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration.
Wrong, Obama himself said the program would cost no more than 900 billion
Yes, he said it would cost that much from 2010 to 2019, and so far it appears that he was correct.
Darn autocorrect. Rather, Google “cbo obamacare deficit impact”.
Not to mention that the cost is irrelevant when it comes to my liberty. Tell you what Jim, I now dictate that you have to get rid of your car and take the bus everywhere. It’s for your own good, and think of how much money we’ll save.
Don’t give him any ideas.
Liberals believe their ideas are so good, they must be compulsory.
Report back when one of these bills has actually passed the House, and been scored by the CBO as covering as many people, and reducing the deficit as much as Obamacare.
Who else here thinks that using Jim’s favorite propaganda tool, the CBO as a gatekeeper for health reform is at all a good idea? When CBO “scores” such a plan in two different ways, one heavily favoring Obamacare and one exaggerating the already considerable consequences of Obamacare, which fairy tale are you going to choose to believe?
The problem here, which you continue to fail to acknowledge is that misleading and deceptive analysis is worse than no analysis at all.
Who else here thinks that using Jim’s favorite propaganda tool, the CBO as a gatekeeper for health reform is at all a good idea?
The CBO is the scorekeeper for any federal legislation with budgetary impact, and has been for decades. Get used to it. Nihilism isn’t an alternative.
If the GOP is serious about replacing Obamacare it will 1) write a bill and debate it in committee, 2) get it scored, and 3) pass it through the House. To date they’ve shown absolutely no interest in doing those things. It’s much easier to complain about Obamacare and hand-wave about alternatives than it is to grapple with the details and tradeoffs involved in producing actual legislation.
The CBO is the scorekeeper for any federal legislation with budgetary impact, and has been for decades. Get used to it. Nihilism isn’t an alternative.
Suddenly the CBO is elevated by you to “scorekeeper”. You do realize that nothing has that status. And once again you ignore the track record and role of the CBO which is to rationalize Congressional bills.
“If the GOP is serious about replacing Obamacare it will 1) write a bill and debate it in committee, 2) get it scored, and 3) pass it through the House. ”
Why does any replacement have to be a government program? Perhaps there are more choices than the ones you offer…
The alternatives discussed to date all involve legislation. Do you have an alternative that doesn’t?
Has the CBO scored fixing Healthcare.gov?
The CBO scores legislation. “Fixing Healthcare.gov” is not a piece of legislation, at least not yet.
So the CBO score is irrelevant.
“Report back when one of these bills has actually passed the House, and been scored by the CBO as covering as many people, and reducing the deficit as much as Obamacare.”
Spoken like a true Statist Serf.
You will never get that report because we do not want a Federally mandated, funded, administered Health Insurance system. Right thinking people know that a free market with free people provides the best economy for more people than any other system every thought of and that includes your rancid Socialism. The best economy brings the best insurance market and availability.
We do not want the graft, corruption, cronyism, inefficiency and ineffectiveness that a Federally created and administered system will inevitably bring.
We do not want the Federal Death Panels which now exist, nor do we want our private medical business to pass through the hands of slimy disinterested bureaucrats in DC. Nor do we want those same bureaucrats to be the ones who decide what treatments we ought to get.
Your very premise is fatally flawed.
Nor do we want those same bureaucrats to be the ones who decide what treatments we ought to get.
Do explain how Obamacare involves bureaucrats in deciding what treatments you ought to get. I’ll wait.
Jim, is this a real question?
IPAB.
Alexander said his plan offers “step-by-step reforms that would reduce the costs of healthcare.”
I think part of the problem is that people have the idea that there’s an “alternative” that “reduce[s] the costs of healthcare”, that the Government can just Make Happen.
It could have some marginal effects by getting out of the way, but I think there are two fundamental issues with the philosophical layer underlying the entire edifice.
First – Nobody but States, and States who are Paying For It With Other People’s Money, cares about aggregate healthcare costs. The idea that “the US spends n% of GDP on healthcare but other country spends less! We’re LOSING/stupid/overspending!” is completely untenable.
Second – You get what you pay for, more or less. A whole lot of the savings of “spending less” is getting less stuff.
People keep going on about “how little healthcare cost the average person in the 50s”, for instance… forgetting that that only got you a 50s standard of care, back when cancer was almost always a death sentence, for instance.
You get what you pay for, more or less
If that were true the U.S. would have much, much better health outcomes than other rich countries (and NASA would have much, much better rockets than Space-X). Spending more doesn’t necessarily get you more.
the U.S. would have much, much better health outcomes than other rich countries
And yet they still line up to come here instead of settling for the care they can get at home. What idiots they are, huh Jim?
And nearly a million Americans line up to get health care elsewhere every year, instead of settling for the care they can get at home. What’s up with that?
And our schools would be the best in the world. I agree that spending large sums of money doesn’t automatically lead to good outcomes. You should be preaching this to your hive not the choir.
Also, the methodology of those shadowy foreign groups pushing health outcomes propaganda is slanted and agenda driven. Maybe Obama should have the IRS look into these people peddling falsehoods and misinformation. I will send an email to flag@whitehouse.gov and get the Truth Squad on the case.
And yet we’re told that public schools “Just need more money”. And we’re also told that Obamacare’s failure was just lack of money because the Republicans held it back.
In other words, failures of democrat’s programs is always explained by lack of money.
And yet we’re told that public schools “Just need more money”.
Exactly. It’s crazy to think that we have the best healthcare because we spend the most, just as it’s crazy to think we have the best schools because we spend the most.
But that is the excuse for EVERY democrat program that fails. And it will be the excuse when Obamacare fails.
“Exactly. It’s crazy to think that we have the best healthcare because we spend the most”
It is also crazy to think that by spending more money we will have the best.
Too bad Obamacare causes most people to spend more than they would have had Obamacare not passed, as evidenced by the stories of people who’s current plans–that Obama lied when he told them they could keep–were cancelled and their new Obamacare-compliant plans cost significantly more.
I read that it’s expected 85% of people on the individual market now will lose their insurance on Jan 1 because Obamacare declared their insurance insufficient. Kind of like how I now have to have a plan that covers pregnancy even though I’m male.
They’re just trying not to be sexist.
My plan was also cancelled.
who’s current plans–that Obama lied when he told them they could keep–were cancelled and their new Obamacare-compliant plans cost significantly more
Several times I had plans cancelled and replaced with more expensive ones, even before Obamacare passed. Don’t confuse the effects of Obamacare with business-as-usual in the health insurance market.
It’s too bad you think that way, because millions of Americans do think that the president lied. In fact, he promised us that we could keep our plan. I thought Obamacare was supposed to be better. But here you are saying it is not.
Uhh no. The insurance companies are not to blame for Obamacare. Obama is responsible for it. When people lose their health insurance because of Obama’s policies and in direct contradiction of his claims about would happen, he deserves to be called out on it.
When insurance companies do something awful on their own, without the government guiding their behavior, then we can talk about how terrible they are but we should give the same consideration to the politicians that created this mess. Unless Obamacare is repealed, there will always be a government role in dictating to insurance companies, doctors, and citizens health care decisions and that deserves to be examined as much or more than your boogeyman of insurance companies.
People are losing their current insurance. Obamacare was sold with lies, distortions, and bribery. This deserves to be pointed out.
It’s actually worse than just having a plan cancelled and having to purchase a more expensive plan. In many states, insurance providers are no longer offering plans, specifically due to Obamacare. So in those states, you don’t just have more expensive options, but fewer options. And if your only option is Obamacare, good luck getting enrolled. Healthcare.gov has allowed as many people to enroll in 3 weeks time as it will need to enroll everyday until Jan 1 in order to close the gap of the 10 million uninsured. However, that 10 million uninsured was an estimate prior to Obamacare becoming the “law of the land”, since then millions more have lost their insurance because of Obamacare. And no additional money spent on an individuals part will help them enroll in a broken system that cannot accommodate their enrollment.
Local radio and television is starting to cover the stories of people with pre-existing conditions, that also had healthcare insurance, but now have lost it because of Obamacare. The failure of Healthcare.gov means they can not get insurance to cover bills that were previously being paid. These are people that did the right things to protect their families, and now are being punished because of Obamacare. Maybe some day, Obamacare will live up to the hype, but in the interim, these people will rack up bills that Obamacare will never pay.
As I said before, the Hollywood Left, the Park Avenue Pinks, the Kennedys and Darth Soros could easily afford to finance a private fund that could buy at least basic health insurance for anyone in a low-income bracket.
The last time I proposed such a scheme, Rear Admiral Gerrib shot back “Charity doesn’t work!”* If , in this instance, voluntarism doesn’t, it’s because “liberals” aren’t digging deep enough into their pockets. The bucks are certainly there; but right now going into Democratic coffers, to support statism–confirming my thesis that “liberalism” today is more about power, coercion and general State-humping than it is about amelioration. Darth Soros alone could probably pay for he plan.
*Translation: “You people aren’t using your money the way I want you to; which gives me the right to force you to use your money the way I want you to.”
Once again, health care does not equal health insurance. For most of America, there is no problem with health care. The problem is how the market is so distorted by how we pay for health care. Under Obamacare, a single 27 year old who doesn’t qualify for a subsidizy will end up paying from $122 to almost $600 a month for insurance that likely has a multi-thousand dollar deductable. In exchange, they get a “free” wellness checkup once a year, perhaps a flu shot and free birth control pills worth perhaps $200.
What would I propose?
1. Allow insurance companies to operate across state lines.
2. Eliminate almost all mandatory coverages and let the buyer select the coverage he/she needs.
3. Allow the buyer and sellers to tailor a wide range of insurance plans from high deductable/HSA combos to full blown “Cadillac” plans as they see fit.
4. Get the government out of it.
Larry, that makes too much sense! Besides, there’s no place in your plan for the government to shove its ideology down our throats!
1. Allow insurance companies to operate across state lines.
How would you deal with a regulatory race to the bottom?
4. Get the government out of it.
How would you deal with people who are turned down by insurance companies, or only offered policies that they can’t afford (e.g. cost more than 10% of their income)?
How would you deal with people whose medical bills aren’t covered by their insurance (e.g. because the policy has a benefit cap)?
“1. Allow insurance companies to operate across state lines.
How would you deal with a regulatory race to the bottom?”
Why would there be a lack of regulations? Each state would have its own regulations under which insurance companies could operate in their state. Also, the commerce clause would come into play so the Feds would get to stick their fingers in it too.
Each state would have its own regulations under which insurance companies could operate in their state
That’s the way it works now, which is why insurance companies can’t “operate across state lines”. Larry is proposing to let insurers be regulated in one state, and sell policies in all the other states. That would set off a regulatory race to the bottom, like the one we’ve seen with credit card companies (they’re all based in Delaware or South Dakota, because those states have the laxest regulations).
Actually, no. I’m proposing that insurers be allowed to sell in any state. That would widen their potential risk pool and lower administrative costs. I’d cut the regulations to the bone. Let people buy the insurance they need instead of having 50 states or the federal government mandate coverage. A young man has no more need to buy prenatal care than a woman need to buy prostate exams. Why make anyone pay for things they don’t need.
Why didn’t you address points 2 & 3, Jim?
2. Eliminate almost all mandatory coverages and let the buyer select the coverage he/she needs.
That’s how it was pre-ACA, and we had people getting sick and being surprised to discover that according to the find print of their policy, that particular disease isn’t covered, or the policy only pays the first $100K of what might be $5M in bills. Insurance that isn’t there when you need it isn’t real insurance.
3. Allow the buyer and sellers to tailor a wide range of insurance plans from high deductable/HSA combos to full blown “Cadillac” plans as they see fit.
The ACA already allows high deductible/HSA combos, and “Cadillac” plans. Not sure why that would be a change.
One of the problems with any health insurance program is that smaller markets have fewer people to spread the financial risk. There are states such as Alaska and Wyoming that have a population of well under a million people. Allowing insurance companies to market across state lines would increase their potential market, allowing them to spread the risk further than is possible when limited to a single state. It would also eliminate unnecessary redundancy and duplication of administrative effort, saving costs.
Up until Obamacare, each state had its own set of mandated coverages that all health insurance policies had to cover. Much of this was politically driven as different niche health care providers lobby (bribe) their representatives to get their services in the set of mandated coverages or as politically active groups were able to persuade their politicians to cover their particular set of interests. All of these mandated coverages work agains someone who doesn’t need any of them. For example, my wife and I have no need for maturnity related services but because they’re mandated, our insurance is more expensive than it could be.
Ideally, people should have a menu of coverage options so they can buy what they need, not what some politician thinks they should be forced to buy. The categories can be broad (such as paying a certain amount per day of in-patient hospital care) or narrow, such as paying a certain percentage of the cost of medical tests or imaging services. You would likely have a different set of desired coverages than I so each of us could choose what level of risk and payment best meets our needs. It’s called freedom of choice and it should apply to more than just getting an abortion.
In exchange, they get a “free” wellness checkup once a year, perhaps a flu shot and free birth control pills worth perhaps $200.
They get the knowledge that if they get cancer, or are hit by a bus, they will be able to get the care they need without going bankrupt.
I pay hundreds of dollars a year in auto insurance, and I’ve had one fender-bender in 30 years. But if my car gets totaled tomorrow, the insurance company will buy me a new one. That’s what I’m paying for.
Did you have insurance when you were 19? 25? 30?
Most young people don’t, unless it is offered by their company.
Again, that was what Rand was trying to explain to you yesterday.
“They get the knowledge that if they get cancer, or are hit by a bus, they will be able to get the care they need without going bankrupt.”
No. Even with insurance, major catastrophes will still cause significant financial burden. Health insurance is not health care. You make it sound like everything is free and it isn’t.
Jim said ; “They get the knowledge that if they get cancer, or are hit by a bus, they will be able to get the care they need without going bankrupt.”
Jim, I had that (past tense) due to the coverage I had (and will lose in a few day’s time). It was a good policy. However, it didn’t meet the baselines in the ACA. For example, it didn’t cover me if I get pregnant (I choose to run that risk, one I consider slight due to me being male, but that’s not longer my choice.). It doesn’t cover my kids, but seeing as I have none, that wasn’t a pressing concern for me. It doesn’t cover a lot of the frills the ACA does. But it was good coverage (for catastrophic events such as hospitalization, not day to day stuff) , and did what I needed. I liked my old policy.
Thanks to the ACA, I’ve received a cancellation letter.
So, I’m now faced with something like Obamacare Bronze, which costs just over twice as much, and is far crappier coverage. Oh, it’s not just the much higher deductibles that makes it crappier, it’s the network limitations. My old policy only hit me for 10% if I went out of network, but with Bronze, it’s a lot worse. And I live in a rural area, Jim; that means my choices for providers are far more limited than most.
So what of it, Jim? What about that solemn promise that if you like your current plan, you can keep it? That was a boldfaced malicious lie told by Obama and his allies, now wasn’t it?
I know it is, because I’m hardly alone in LOSING MY CURRENT HEALTHCARE thanks to this law (and any replacement will cost a lot more and be a lot worse).
So, please explain to my why I, or anyone, should believe anything else we’ve been told about Obamacare by these same folks?
And that is the thing. We are not talking about esoteric effects of government policies on faceless people. We are talking about real world effects on every single citizen in the country. The examples of people who are losing their old insurance are all around us. It should be interesting to see the final numbers on people who had health insurance but were forced to get a new policy. That is if Obama lets that information be released.
Every single citizen? What is the real world effect on Ted Cruz? He’s on his wife’s Goldman Sachs health policy. How is Obamacare hurting him?
It should be interesting to see the final numbers on people who had health insurance but were forced to get a new policy
I’d like to see the numbers from 2006, 2007, 2008. It isn’t as if being forced to get a new policy is a new thing.
Thanks to the ACA, I’ve received a cancellation letter.
That’s your insurer’s choice. They could add the required items missing from your current coverage, and sell you a modified plan. Instead they send you a cancellation letter, and blame the ACA. My policies have been discontinued just about every year since 2001, simply because the insurance company wanted an excuse to make the coverage worse and/or hike the premium. It’s SOP, and the ACA gives them someone to blame.
It doesn’t cover my kids
ACA plans don’t have to cover kids, you can get coverage just for yourself, or just for yourself and a spouse.
Liberals seem to fear getting hit by a bus a lot, don’t they? Or is that from the latest approved talking points?
Unless some clever new technology bails us out, socialized medicine is an inevitability. The problem with the system in the US is the combination of insurance and the massive government subsidy of medical services for “poor” people. The government hands out nearly a trillion dollars per year that can only be spent on one thing, medical care. What would happen to the price of any other supply limited commodity like gold for example, if the government handed every man woman and child $3000 each year and told them they could only spend it gold?
Hmmm, let’s try to think of an example like that? How about college education? Supply hundreds of billions of dollars and the price goes up.
If the government discontinued all medical payments instantly, the price of services would drop so low that no one would need or want insurance and the problem would be solved. Since we know that won’t happen because it would be mean to not give free money to people, the end of the line will be rationed socialized medicine.
I always thought it was weird that it’s easy to get a loan for tens of thousands of dollars to pay for a dubious education in, oh, say, eastern european 19th century literature or what-have-you but it’s not nearly as easy to get a loan for medical bills. Perhaps it would be helpful to have a government backed loan that was not easily dismissable (similar to many student loans). The insurance model of health care might be ok for some circumstances but as an overarching model for handling all medical treatments it’s very broken.
As an aside, it would help if the federal government wasn’t sucking 15% out of everyone’s paychecks in the great pyramid schemes that are social security and medicare. Also if our laws and regulations didn’t actively discourage people to save money.
Commie Jim loves to tout the Massachusetts health care system as remarkably successful and wonderful. Too bad he is either lying or misinformed.
From the Boston Globe, October 13, 2013. And the Globe is not known for it’s Conservative views, owned by the New York Times, as they are:
Why is it so hard to find a doctor?
Half of primary care physicians in our state are not accepting new patients. A prescription for the problem.
“When she didn’t connect with that physician, she was able to switch to one she liked. But his practice stopped taking her insurance, and Quirk has needed a good chunk of this year to land a replacement doctor. She felt relief in September when she found one who was accepting new patients, but that was only the first hurdle. She won’t find out whether she likes this new doctor for a while; she couldn’t get an appointment until April 2014. …….
Quirk’s woes reflect a broader problem in the Boston area: It’s hard to get a doctor. Entire practices are booked. Even if she wanted to go back to her old doctor in Boston, he probably wouldn’t be able to take her. His practice is part of Massachusetts General Hospital, and primary care openings at MGH are like snowflakes in September.
Across Massachusetts, about half of primary care doctors aren’t taking new patients, according to the Massachusetts Medical Society’s 2013 Patient Access to Care Study. The rate for internal medicine specialists, or internists, who often also serve as primary care doctors, is 55 percent. If you’ve found a new doctor and want to schedule a routine visit, be prepared to wait. It takes an average of 39 days for new patients to get an appointment with a family physician and 50 days to see an internist. That’s better than last year, when the average wait was a whopping 45 days, but up from 29 days in 2010.
Ginsburg also says Boston hospitals often paid primary care doctors at about the national average, despite the higher-than-average cost of living in this area.
Though that has helped with pay disparities, in the 2013 Massachusetts Medical Society Physician Workforce Study, 45.6 percent of primary care doctors in the Bay State said their salaries were uncompetitive or very uncompetitive compared with MDs in other states (53.2 percent of specialists in Massachusetts said the same).
MassHealth and other government subsidized programs are not an open door to primary care doctors, as Stanley Kisob found out. Kisob, a resident of Framingham, lost his job in June and with it his Harvard Pilgrim insurance. He signed up for Commonwealth Care — another state-subsidized insurance program (to be phased out as ACA comes online) — and called his doctor to schedule his annual physical. “They wouldn’t do it because I didn’t have insurance they would take,” Kisob says.
He spent the summer looking for a doctor on his own and was turned down by several who didn’t take his insurance. ……..”
And from the Washington Post, Feb 2013:
“Danger ahead? Massachusetts health costs are rising – fast.
By Sarah Kliff, Published: February 9
Representatives from the state’s nonprofit health plans as well as national for-profit insurers doing business in Massachusetts estimated the “medical cost trend,” a key industry measure, will climb between 6 and 12 percent this year — higher than last year’s cost bump and more than double the 3.6 percent increase set as a target in a state law passed last year.
The new projections of accelerating costs are a sobering sign those moderating trends may be fading.
…………….
Massachusetts experts have, for awhile now, maintained some skepticism about whether the legislation would actually keep costs down. While the state has achieved near-universal coverage with its 2006 reform law, handing out health insurance cards is a less challenging task than bringing down the price of health-care services.
What happens if costs do grow as quickly as these health plans predict? It’s not quite clear: There is a new agency, the Health Policy Commission Board, that has the authority to review the rates that insurance companies and doctors charge patients.
If that board does find a rate increase inappropriate, it can contact the doctor or hospital, and draw a plan for reducing cost. They cannot do much more than that, such as set their own rates, which would give them significantly more sway over health-cost growth.
Stuart Altman, a health economist at Brandeis University who chairs the board, argues that it’s an appropriate amount of power for the time being: The panel is meant to be a watchdog, rather than a regulator….
“The commission was set up to [be] a watchdog and see to what extent the work the private sector is doing is working,” he told me in a recent interview. “If after two or three years from now, it’s working, that’s great. If not, the commission can come back to the legislature and say, ‘This isn’t working, we need more power.’ I think that was the right way to structure this.”
And THERE you have it…..
WE NEED MORE POWER…………
Remove the perverse incentives for employers choosing the health plans for their employees and the US will have the best health care system in the world.
Oh wait.. The US already has the best health care system in the world, for a few more years anyway.
Remove the perverse incentives for employers choosing the health plans for their employees and the US will have the best health care system in the world.
We can blame that on Ted Kennedy.
The solution is simple (not politically)… don’t let the government be involved at all. Let the market take care of it. Assuming government would never allow that to happen (a really safe assumption) then we have second best… medical vouchers to buy whatever insurance (regardless of state) a person wants. That way the government can still redistribute and buy votes, but the market doesn’t have to deal with govt. idiocy otherwise.
The fact that it’s not just the federal website but state websites as well that are having problems points to the common factor… the ObamaCare business logic must be a Gordian knot. There’s only one way to tackle a Gordian knot…
Read Kenneth Arrow’s classic paper on why health care markets can’t work.
state websites as well that are having problems
Kentucky, Connecticut, New York, Washington and California apparently have websites that are working well. And of course the Massachusetts website has been working since 2007.