Links Thursday: Health Care

[coyotesuspect]

Leverage!

 

Oh, Leverage. You try so hard to be serious, yet you end up just being silly. <3 Eliot and Hardison fighting over the shirt was adorable. Every line Parker said was adorable. ("What if there's a train accident and someone points at me and says, 'You, help me with this gaping chest wound.'?" "Did you just give someone a nosebleed with the power of your mind?") Sophie thinking Nate's sadism was sexy was adorable. And the Marshall checking up on the little boy at the end was adorable.

Conclusion: ADORABLE.

***

It seems like the LibDems and the Blue Dogs have reached a compromise of sorts on healthcare. It bothers me that they've dropped the public option, but this proposal still has to be melded with last month's measure that did include a public option. C'mon Rahmy, get in there and fight!

Seems to me like there's two big problems with healthcare in this country:

1) Too many people are not covered by insurance.

2) Healthcare and healthcare insurance are really freakin' expensive.

 

Obviously the second problem is the main reason behind the first problem, so the main questions are, "How do we keep costs down?" and "If we can't keep the costs down, who's gonna pay for it? Individuals? Business? The government?" There's all kinds of ways to reduce the cost of healthcare (putting doctors on salaries, less reliance on "cutting edge" technologies, less specialists and more general practicioners, etc), but at the end of the day, there will still be a hefty bill. So when the pundits say, "Oh! But this reform will cost x amount of dollars, and it is entirely unfair to place that burden on the taxpayer," the fact of the matter is, the taxpayer will still be paying for his/her healthcare, in some way. What the pundit really means is, "Oh, we know you're gonna tax rich people more for this, and that's not fair because rich people > all other Americans. Also, big government makes me want to wet my pants."

At least with a public option, we make sure everyone has access to not mind-numbingly expensive healthcare, and pressure is put on insurance companies to be better. Health insurance isn't a regular good. It's not like pizza, where you can shop around and all you have to consider is how much does it cost and how soon will it be made and how far is the pizza place from the house and how good does the pizza taste. It's vastly more complicated. Government provided health insurance is not an unforgivable assraping of the free market, because health insurance is not a typical free market good.

And here are some links to articles about healthcare by people much more intelligent and informed than I.

Disruptive Innovation, Applied to Health Care
New York Times, January 2009

"Hospitals and doctors are paid by insurers and the government for the health care equivalent of piecework: hospitals profit from full beds and doctors profit from repeat visits. There is no financial incentive to keep patients healthy."

Heading for the Emergency Room
The Economist, June 2009

"Comparisons with other rich countries and within the United States show that America’s health-care system is not only growing at an unsustainable pace, but also provides questionable value for money and dubious medical care."

Hold the Mayo
Slate, July 2009

"It has been documented time and again that private insurance is much costlier, much less efficient, and much less able to boss doctors around. Altering fee structures in any meaningful way therefore requires expanding government's role in the medical economy beyond anything contemplated in the various health reform bills."

Health Reform Can Pay for Itself
Slate, July 2009

"The Senate bill, as passed last week by the health committee, would cost about $600 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office's most recent calculation. The health committee proposed no offsetting taxes. But that's because the health committee can't propose any taxes: Taxation lies outside its jurisdiction. "

And if you really get on a health care binge, my delicious account is here.