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The Right Prescription
The Employer Mandate and the Alternative
(Page 2 of 2)
Second, the President's letter (and later his speech) included the following argument for establishing a government-run insurance program to which every American could subscribe (commonly called "the public option"): "I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest." By the same reasoning, the government could establish a government-owned car manufacturer (indeed it has), a government-owned bank (indeed it has), a government-owned television station, a government-owned chain of pizza parlors -- all to make the market more competitive and keep the private sector competitors honest.
My response is this: Any healthcare legislation enacted by a legislature established by the United States Constitution should enhance our freedoms -- the freedoms of employers, of employees, of healthcare providers, of health insurance carriers. We must find a way for our government to encourage entities other than employers to offer health insurance and offer them the opportunity to do so across state boundaries. This would provide an exponential increase in competition, freedom of choice for all, and no worries by individuals about portability from job to job or about pre-existing conditions.
Imagine this if you would: You belong to an association devoted to the cure of juvenile diabetes. Under new legislation, the association offers health insurance to all of its members -- with the profits from its health insurance program going to fund research for the cure.
Americans belong to a host of associations and organizations: fraternal organizations like the Elks, Optimists, Shriners, Knights of Columbus; churches, synagogues and mosques; unions; ethnic groups such as NAACP, Ancient Order of Hibernians, La Raza; Daughters of the American Revolution; college alumni associations; National Rifle Association -- you name it. Each of these could be incentivized to provide one or more plans of health insurance to members. These entities could bargain on behalf of thousands of members for group rates, or even self-insure. You could select a plan to meet the needs of you and your family from one of the entities to which you belong. You would not be dependent on your employer for health insurance.
Just as the law has incentivized employers since World War II to provide health insurance for employees, the law could incentivize non-employers to do so. Although an employer could continue to provide health insurance, nearly every employer would see that it would be better to give a voucher to employees who could choose their own plan from various sources. At the same time, the employer could eliminate from its budget the administrative burden of negotiating with an insurance provider and administering the insurance plan.
We are constantly told that now -- this summer -- is the time to reform the health care system in America. If we are to enact changes, let us resolve to make changes consistent with American liberties. Having the government mandate that employers provide health insurance, having the government create distinctions between big and small businesses, having the government establish minimum health care coverage, and having the government incorporate a government-owned health insurance carrier does not qualify as change consistent with American liberties.
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Robert Rosencrans| 6.22.09 @ 6:25AM
The proponents of nationalized health care will do what it takes to get it in writing. They will sacrifice on a small level to get the big picture painted. Once it's passed, those who were excluded will soon be included.
Once health care is guaranteed all those issues surrounding health will rise. One example. You will have to have decent housing guaranteed so that your "health" is guaranteed.
The end result of this mad plan will be to destroy wealth. Millions will become unemployed. How you will you make out? Bet against it. Big.
2Anglico| 6.22.09 @ 8:35AM
If I held someone up with the threat of force, and demanded they give me money to help my Grannie pay for her meds, that would be armed robbery. An "employer mandate" is using force to take money from one to serve the needs of another. This is THEFT! But today in America THEFT is legal, if you have a majority vote in congress!
Michael L. Hauschild| 6.22.09 @ 8:38AM
If ever there was a rational (and not rationalization) class warfare argument it is time for its invocation. There always was the overseas alternative for those “regulated” (read rationed) seeking medical procedures, after all our medical colleges produce the finest doctors in the world no matter where they go after they graduate. This is the entitlement that always has been available, but is about to become propriety to the rich, the franchised, and the celebrity. Average Joe will have to remain here and stand in line. If you do not believe this “do as I say, you do not get to do what I do” principle, examine where the children of the aforementioned attend school.
It is an absolute necessity to stop socialized medicine from becoming the law of the land.
Mikecampbelly2k| 6.22.09 @ 8:42AM
The LAPDOG media will do their part:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/06/21/nyt-cbs-stock-pro-obamacare-poll-obama-voters
Marcell| 6.22.09 @ 9:01AM
There is a high probability that we might lose this battle. If we do lose the battle, we should lose it in a way that forces the other side to deal with all of our concerns, so that it shows that we are looking out for the best interest of all Americans, & we are willing to fight on their behalf as well.
"Then, the Republicans can vote no on the bill based on their fundamental beliefs."
There are lots of ways to continue winning the debate on this issue during this week, yet I believe the issues surrounding lawsuits & the hefty costs that are spent on the R&D needed to make sure that the drug can pass the FDA's requirements, as one of my conservative freinds explained to me, are two great tools to control the debate. If the Republicans focus on the two talking points, at least behind the scenes, you will be a force to be wrecken with within the MSM.
Here are two articles to make my point:
Lawsuits That Make Care Costly
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Columnist Steven Pearlstein was correct in noting that various factors have contributed to rising health-care costs ["Self-Help for the Health-Care System," Business, June 17]. But, like many analysts, he understated the impact of medical liability litigation.
A 2006 Harvard School of Public Health study found that four out of every 10 medical malpractice lawsuits filed each year are "without merit."
Serving primarily to enrich the personal-injury lawyers who drive them, these lawsuits add significantly to overall health-care costs.
How much? In a Massachusetts Medical Society survey published last November, 83 percent of Bay State physicians cited the fear of being sued in their decisions to practice "defensive medicine," a phenomenon that adds at least $1.4 billion to annual health-care costs in that state alone.
According to the 900 doctors surveyed, on average, 18 to 28 percent of tests, procedures, referrals, and consultations and 13 percent of hospitalizations were ordered to avoid lawsuits.
Such findings make it clear: If any health-care reforms are to succeed, they must be buttressed by liability reform. Certainly real victims of negligence must be fairly compensated, but public policy must discourage litigation that abuses our civil justice system and makes health care less accessible and more expensive.
DARREN McKINNEY
Director of Communications
American Tort Reform Association
Marcell| 6.22.09 @ 9:02AM
The FDA Needs a Big Dose of Economics
October 25, 2002
Alexander T. Tabarrok, Daniel B. Klein
Providence Journal
Economist Mark McClellan was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the new commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Formerly a member of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, McClellan as FDA chief will be in a position to reform FDA policy in light of economic understanding.
Congress gave the FDA power over the drug market to make sure that only safe and effective drugs are sold. Sounds warm and soothing, but economists have a professional responsibility to recognize what Nobel laureate economist Douglas North calls the terrible trade-offs. In fulfilling that responsibility, economists usually become, as George Stigler put it, pourers of cold water.
Numerous economists have studied “the world’s premier consumer protection regulatory agency” (as the FDA calls itself on its Web site). When these economists express judgment, they always say that the FDA is too restrictive.
In trying to eliminate bad drugs, the FDA prevents or delays many good drugs from reaching Americans. Sam Peltzman was one of the first economists to do the grisly math. His work shows that lives saved by FDA restrictions are few compared with the lives that would be saved by drugs that would be available if the FDA weren’t blocking the way.
Economist Dale Gieringer examined the relatively laissez-faire period before 1962 and tabulated all the drug catastrophes. He shows that despite all the folklore about snake oil, serious catastrophes were few and far between, the worst being the 107 people killed in 1937 from Elixir Sulfanilimide (the chemist used a poisonous solvent, and subsequently committed suicide).
Terrible things do happen in the free market. But how terrible, and how often? Reinforcing Peltzman, Gieringer showed that the bad cases are few compared with the mortality and morbidity caused by FDA restrictions. For example, the FDA’s delay of beta-blockers caused at least 50,000 premature American deaths. There are many cases of death by delay, and probably many more cases of death by never-developed drugs because the FDA made getting permission too expensive and too uncertain. (The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development estimates that, on average, it costs $800 million to bring a drug to market.)
Economists recognize that bureaucrats respond to incentives. In deciding a new drug application, the FDA official might err by permitting a bad drug. If he does, a child might become gravely ill from the side effects of the new drug. Television reporters show the poor child languishing in a hospital bed. Viewers see and share in the suffering. When the child dies, people blame the FDA official who signed off on the unsafe drug. Shouldn’t he have known better?
But the other error is failing to permit a beneficial drug. If a child suffers from a disease that could be cured by a drug not yet permitted by the FDA, it is unlikely that the child’s parents or doctors would even be aware of that fact. When the child dies because a drug is not available or never even developed, no reporters are present. The death is quietly regarded as an unavoidable tragedy. If anyone knows of new therapies awaiting the FDA’s permission, and asks whether the child might have been saved, the FDA responds that such therapies are “experimental” and “unproven.” And that’s that.
Sensitive to these incentives, and never quite sure whether a drug is safe, the bureaucrat responds accordingly.
Economists like to ask interminably: “And what would happen next?” When the FDA is stingy in giving permission, drug development is stunted, and there is no automatic correction mechanism. This is quite unlike the automatic correction that occurs when bad drugs are released onto the market.
Economist Robert Higgs has published lengthy studies of the FDA regulation of medical devices. He finds: “Americans would be better off with drastic curtailment, ideally the complete abolition of the current regulatory regime.” Another Nobel laureate economist, Milton Friedman, concludes on the basis of these and other studies: “The FDA has already done enormous harm to the health of the American public by greatly increasing the costs of pharmaceutical research, thereby reducing the supply of new and effective drugs.”
The FDA also restricts what drug makers can say about their products. Economists John Calfee and Paul Rubin have led the way in showing how the FDA’s efforts to protect consumers from misleading information have often delayed consumer awareness of opportunities to improve their health. Calfee concludes: “The evidence is very strong that the FDA suppresses a great deal of useful information. Experience from related markets in this nation and abroad also strongly indicates that informational competition involving drugs and devices is likely to work well, and that the pharmaceutical market does not pose unique problems that make it unsuitable for traditional competitive dynamics.”
Rubin adds that if the FDA significantly liberalized commercial speech, “the results will be greatly improved health of consumers and reduced prices of pharmaceuticals.”
Economist Murray Weidenbaum put it this way: “Warts and all, the competitive marketplace is the best protector of consumers.”
We have created a Web site — FDAReview.org — that includes a compendium of 17 different expressions of judgment by economists, all speaking for liberalization. No economist who has studied the FDA comes to a contrary conclusion.
How has the FDA responded to economists' findings? It hasn’t. It just ignores economists. On the FDA’s Web site there is a bibliography of more than 50 works on the FDA, only one by an economist: Peter Temin’s tepidly critical history of the FDA.
Also on the FDA’s Web site is a puff piece entitled, “Science at FDA: The Key to Making the Right Decision,” boasting of all the microbiologists and pharmacologists employed by the FDA. Yet the FDA is in the business not of practicing medicine or doing scientific research but of making public policy. As such, the science most relevant to its decisions is not medicine or pharmacology but political economy. Making economist Mark McClellan the chief of the FDA promises to bring economics to the FDA — the real scientific key to making the right decisions.
Alan Brooks| 6.22.09 @ 10:04AM
but what do you mean "the government should be incentivizing freedom"?
Doesn't the marketplace?
Did you mean to write "the government should be facilitating the incentivization of freedom"?
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Marcell| 6.22.09 @ 3:01PM
Sec'y Sebelius Argues US health Care Too Expensive
WASHINGTON (AP) — Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the country has no choice but to revamp its health care program because current costs are "crushing families and businesses."
Sebelius acknowledged in a nationally broadcast interview that getting legislation overhauling the system enacted won't be easy and won't happen quickly and without many policy debates.
Sebelius, interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America" Monday, said that people can must also bear more responsibility for holding costs down by taking better care of themselves. Health care adviser Melody Barnes said the administration's plan would redirect money "so that you are efficiently and effectively using it."
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor said a government-administered plan "will increase costs. It will reduce choices and essentially it will not allow you to keep what you have."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Marcell| 6.22.09 @ 4:02PM
Both sides should do the figuring on how much this is worth, & get back to me:
slivernblackcell@yahoo.com
Takes Time To Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar1XA16zsDM
*****************
Obama's poll numbers start to wilt
By: Michael Falcone and Andy Barr
June 22, 2009 01:47 PM EST
Eroding confidence in President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy and ability to control spending have caused his approval ratings to wilt to their lowest levels since taking office, according to a spate of recent polls, a sign of political weakness that comes just as he most needs leverage on Capitol Hill.
Smash Mouth Football =)
Pingback| 6.23.09 @ 1:44AM
2Dinternational.com » The American Spectator : The Employer Mandate and the Alternati links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Marcell| 6.23.09 @ 1:53AM
Earlier this year, I read an op-ed at American Stinker about how the Republican Party is losing the battle on the internet; it concluded that they needed to invest in someone who knows how to use the internet to market conservatism in more positive & inspiring ways…” & I know that I am the person.
….So, let's try to prove it.”
If this were a football game, the score would be 17 Obama & Repubs 7. I also feel as if I caught two big passes on the Repubs scoring drive.
…”It only makes sense to add this to my resume:”
Before I first came to this site, I decided to find the rightwingers who are the movers & shakers within the politicking business, & hopefully make them an offer they can't refuse, but I knew no one would take me serious, so I focused on one Person … “The Dick Cheney.” He was, supposed, to be the toughest rethug of them all... =)
This is for the researchers:
'Uncle Dick' Redux: Out of Office, Will Cheney Be GOP's Truman?
by John Gizzi
05/29/2009
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32048&page=1#c1
Good Night!!
Richard Baker| 6.25.09 @ 2:25AM
Marcell:
Why don't you try expressing YOUR thoughts instead of copying large sections of articles and stories from elsewhere and pasting them here. Speak for yourself, if you can. Quantity is not quality. Electronics have made you lazy.
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