Detonating Obama's Feeble Health Care Arguments

From Robert J. Samuelson at Newsweek (excerpts; emphasis mine):

It's hard to know whether President Obama's health-care "reform" is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three. The president keeps saying it's imperative to control runaway health spending. He's right. The trouble is that what's being promoted as health-care "reform" almost certainly won't suppress spending and, quite probably, will do the opposite.

A new report from Obama's own Council of Economic Advisers shows why controlling health costs is so important. Since 1975, annual health spending per person, adjusted for inflation, has grown 2.1 percentage points faster than overall economic growth per person. If this trend continues, the CEA projects that:

*Health spending, which was 5 percent of the economy (gross domestic product) in 1960 and is reckoned at almost 18 percent today, would grow to 34 percent of GDP by 2040 -- a third of the economy.

*Medicare and Medicaid, the government insurance programs for the elderly and poor, would increase from 6 percent of GDP now to 15 percent in 2040 -- roughly equal to three-quarters of present federal spending.

*Employer-paid insurance premiums for family coverage, which grew 85 percent in inflation-adjusted terms from 1996 to $11,941 in 2006, would increase to $25,200 by 2025 and $45,000 in 2040 (all figures in "constant 2008 dollars"). The huge costs would force employers to reduce take-home pay.

The message in these dismal figures is that uncontrolled health spending is almost single-handedly determining national priorities. It's reducing discretionary income, raising taxes, widening budget deficits and squeezing other government programs. Worse, much medical spending is wasted, the CEA report says. It doesn't improve Americans' health; some care is unneeded or ineffective.

The Obama administration's response is to talk endlessly about restraining health spending—"bending the curve" is the buzz—as if talk will suffice. The president summoned the heads of major health-care groups representing doctors, hospitals, drug companies and medical device firms to the White House. All pledged to bend the curve. This is mostly public relations. Does anyone believe the American Medical Association can control the nation's 800,000 doctors or that the American Hospital Association can command the 5,700 hospitals?

The central cause of runaway health spending is clear. Hospitals and doctors are paid mostly on a fee-for-service basis and reimbursed by insurance, either private or governmental. The open-ended payment system encourages doctors and hospitals to provide more services—and patients to expect them. It also favors new medical technologies, which are made profitable by heavy use. Unfortunately, what pleases providers and patients individually hurts the nation as a whole.

That's the crux of the health-care dilemma, and Obama hasn't confronted it. His emphasis on controlling costs is cosmetic. The main aim of health-care "reform" being fashioned in Congress is to provide insurance to most of the 46 million uncovered Americans. This is popular and seems the moral thing to do. After all, hardly anyone wants to be without insurance. But the extra coverage might actually worsen the spending problem.

Much more at the link above.

The Wall Street Journal also had a recent report that hammered at a common Obama mantra: creating a competing government option will make the private market even better.  Not so (excerpts; emphasis mine):

In reality, equal competition between a public plan and private plans would be impossible. The public plan would inexorably crowd out private plans, leading to a single-payer system.

Advocates claim that a public plan would achieve significant savings in administrative costs. Among other omissions, they ignore that a significant proportion of private insurers' expenses are incurred for creating and maintaining provider networks, and for monitoring payments to reduce waste and fraud. Private health plans have a strong incentive to spend a dollar as long as the expected savings in payments is at least a dollar. The resulting expenditures increase reported administrative costs, but they save money overall. A public plan will not have comparable incentives.

One proposal is for a public plan to pay Medicare rates, perhaps with a small markup. Because Medicare reimbursements already entail substantial cost-shifting to private payers, any expansion of Medicare payment rates, with or without a modest markup, would further shift costs to private payers and accelerate the crowd-out of private plans.

With or without a public-plan option, reform legislation is almost certain to substantially narrow the dimensions on which health plans compete. Given the fixation of many reform proponents' on attempting to ensure that no person's premiums or coverage terms will be related to health status, private plans will be required to accept all applicants, probably at rates that vary only with age and geographic region. There will be heavy constraints on benefit design and marketing, perhaps with ex post transfers of funds among insurers to even out profitability. Under the guise of preventing "cherry picking" health customers, a government-run plan could easily be accompanied by additional constraints or surcharges on private plans to deter them from offering attractive options.

The simple truth is that equal competition between a government health-insurance plan and private plans would be impossible. An ostensibly competing public plan would make a single-payer system inevitable. Health-care providers and other Americans should recognize this reality and be prepared for the consequences.

Again, hit the link for the full article.

Bottom line: every facet of Obama's plan -- other than the generic assertion that health care costs are out of control -- is either demonstrably false, a deception, or an outright lie.  No matter what the redefinition-of-the-day calls the plan, it is what it is: government control of health care.

And that means some faceless bureaucrat decides what treatments and procedures can be obtained by whom, how much it costs, and what your life and health is worth.  Sound like a good plan to you?

This was disastrous when Clinton tried it in the early 1990s, it's disastrous in every other nation that has tried it, and it will be equally disastrous if it happens here.  Call your Senators and Rep and tell them in no uncertain terms that they need to oppose this.  Your life and the lives of your loved ones quite literally may depend upon it.

There's my two cents.