The American Spectator

Mike| 7.4.09 @ 9:11AM

So the answer is do nothing?

Mike| 7.4.09 @ 9:18AM

Does John Goodman have any suggestions or is he simply in favor of standing pat?

Bob| 7.4.09 @ 9:40AM

There are a few basics here:

First, you can't reduce costs substantially without rationing. Right now, insurance companies ration care. They would not be profitable if they were required to insure with pre-existing conditions or if they were required to take everyone. Anyone who has worked in group insurance knows that.

Secondly, it isn't the public option that is the problem, it is that we all want more for less. Whatever happened to the American principle that if you want more, you'll have to pay for it? The only solution that will work is basic care with rationing as a base and supplemental plans that you pay for if you want more and don't want to be rationed. This tiered plan is what I would propose.

Goodman is right, that there is a complex system. But not making a structural change is not addressing the issue. Anyone with experience in managing a complex system knows that the way to handle this is to come up with several hypotheses and test the effects on the entire system. Again, this experimentalist approach is one that I would propose.

But then again, who listens to reason?

Libby Tarian| 7.4.09 @ 11:59AM

We, as a culture, want to live forever and we are willing to spend whatever it takes to do it, the future be damned. When is old, old enough? Why would a 77 yr old want to be on a heart-assist device? Why would a woman want her 94 yr. old father with severe Alheimers to have a pacemaker installed? Until we comes to terms with our deaths, healthcare will be more and more expensive.

Jim O'Brien| 7.4.09 @ 8:32PM

We still have the best medical care in the world, but it could be a lot better. If medicine had taken the path of technology in the last few decades, we would have far lower prices, easier access, and higher quality medical care. Compare the 1981 IBM PC priced at over $3,000 to today’s iMac for about $1,500. The old IBM PC is now the Stone Age, and iMac’s are hundreds of thousands of times better for half the price.

In other words, medicine should be returned to the private sector, where competition always produces higher quality, lower prices, easy access, and many choices. Instead of more government control and edicts, we need less government interference. Government is not the solution; government is the problem.

Warren Jewell| 7.5.09 @ 2:37PM

Hmmm - I see nothing here that says 'do nothing' - but I do see cautions about 'let government pretend to do everything' - or even what they are pretending to do now. The remark about insurance companies 'rationing' is infantile: the group buyer - employer - buys the coverage he wants to support. The insurer backs those purchased provisions. But, insurance limitations and effective larceny are nothing to that of Medicare.

One writer tells us to grow up and realize that we will suffer and die, and he has a point - about the growing up, for sure. But, it is struggling to preserve life and return health at every opportunity that makes for better and better medicines.

'Government solution'? Pick up 80% of COBRA premiums by six-month applications periods; ditto 80% of premiums of uninsured until they can find insurance. Continue 80% premium subsidies where 'welfare' terms would dictate that Medicaid used to cover (and of course dump Medicaid). Just putting up the bucks until the uncovered get covered is cheaper and fairer than some know-thing bureaucracy making dictates from doctor to death-bed.