Obama Makes A Bad Bet…And Doubles Down
Posted by David Edman in Blog, Healthcare Reform Blog, March 2010 on March 8th, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Our great country needs health reform, so it is with some regret that it is time to declare Obamacare dead. It is not that people like me do not want the President to succeed and our country to thrive…we do. But given the hand we have been dealt on health reform, it is time to fold our cards and deal another round.
Obamacare (In A Nutshell)
Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal (3/6/10, “What A Disaster Looks Like”) characterized Obamacare thusly: “His (Obama’s) essential mistake was to choose health-care expansion over health-care reform.” In other words, Obamacare does not fix what is broken; rather, it merely insures more people into an already broken system, thereby throwing good money after bad. The following is my condensed version of Obamacare and its impact:
- A 2000+ page bill with a significant amount of new regulation, bureaucracy, and cost.
- An estimated cost of $1 trillion, but actual cost that will total trillions.
- A no-win situation where the ONLY way to avoid massive deficits is with massive rationing of healthcare services by a government bureaucracy.
- Promises from government to cut wasteful and unnecessary healthcare spending that will not happen—there has never been the political will to do so for Medicare and Medicaid.
Health Reform Done Right
The healthcare industry is complex and some would argue its problems intractable, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are successful models for reducing healthcare costs to guide our efforts:
- First, break health reform into smaller, manageable parts. Address pre-exiting conditions, portability, insurer anti-trust exemption, and competition across state lines.
- The State of Indiana has a successful example of health reform. Read Governor Mitch Daniels account called “Hoosiers and Health Savings Accounts”.
- Let’s build health reform around consumer driven health care and personal responsibility. Reward healthy lifestyles, as in the example of Safeway Corporation.
Successful health reform is not about the government forcing its citizens to do it a certain way. It’s about learning from success and encouraging widespread adoption of best practices. Trust the states and the American people to do the right thing. We should no longer subsidize the financing of our healthcare the old and inefficient way, as Obamacare does.
Send a Message To Your Elected Representatives
The prevalent argument for Obamacare is that we must do something now. We agree, but let’s start by defeating Obamacare. Contact your Members of Congress with the following message—on February 24, 2010, there was an overwhelming bi-partisan vote (406 to 19) to strip health insurers of their anti-trust exemption in the House of Representatives. This is a small, but important, first step. So, the message is as follows:
Senators: The Senate should pass a similar bi-partisan legislation already approved by the House to remove the health insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption. Any efforts at reconciliation (or the nuclear option) to pass Obamacare should be resisted. Health reform is critically important legislation that should require a super-majority (60 votes) in order to pass.
Representatives: The Senate Health Reform bill is a bad bill and should not be passed by the House. It contains the Cornhusker kickback, Louisiana purchase, and other irresponsible deal-making needed by Senate leaders to pass a bad bill. If your Representative is a Blue Dog Democrat, encourage the entire caucus to oppose this bill. If they claim to be fiscal conservatives, they must vote accordingly.
What do you think about the future of Obamacare? Please post your comments.
David,
I agree with the majority if not all of your points and recommendations. We do need health care reform however this is not reform. Let’s break this down into incremental improvements that can be understood by the average american instead of these massive 2000+ page bills that have become the norm.
David -
I think you make great points here. I would add that the current bill before the HR has very little to do with Healthcare reform and all to do with Insurance Reform, which just so happens to be a great perceived target for the party in power. True health reform would start with addressing the root causes of our greatest issue: escalating health care costs. Consumerism is notably missing from the current system and in my view is the greatest cause of cost escalation. I go into greater detail on this on my blog blog.jacobsononline.com.
So David, guess you’ll be issuing a retraction given that the CBO has found the proposed legislation would reduce the deficit by $138 billion in its first decade and half of 1 percent of G.D.P., amounting to around $1.2 trillion, in its second decade. So we spend a bit in order to save much more over the long haul, and also insure millions more Americans and make it easier for folks to afford and also be covered by health insurance. In other words, we’ll be joining the rest of civilization. Well, almost. We don’t have a truly universal health care system, but I’ll settle for something rather than the ridiculous status quo.
And yes, this is system reform, not just insurance reform. It doesn’t go as far as many of us would like in terms of true health care reform (eg, single payor), but at least it goes part-way there. Right now, our health care system, for all intents and purposes, is run by third-party payors. They’ve done a terrible job for people, other than their shareholders (they’ve done a great job for them). And I don’t begrudge their bringing value to shareholders-that’s the nature of capitalism. It’s just that capitalism, by its nature, hurts a lot of people in the name of profits. So we need an alternative to the insurance companies. While not perfect, govt-run health care is far better and more efficient than private health insurers. There is far less overhead, for example. There is no focus on shareholder profits, so money left over can be thrown back into the system. It does work-look at the VA and CMS, for example.