Tag: health reform

Why Can’t the Destroyers Just Get Along?

By
Michael F. Cannon

A friend comments on my “How Does It Feel to Be at the Table Now?” post thus:

I think there is a pyschological element at work here a la Atlas Shrugged — many of the Washington lobbyists who were here in 93-94 feel repentant of having killed health reform back then and don’t want another 15 years of being considered “bad people” in Washington cocktail party circles. So they genuinely want to be “part of the solution” this time. The hard part is selling that to the folks who pay their salaries!

Topics: 
Health Care

How Does It Feel to Be at the Table Now?

By
Michael F. Cannon

On Monday, the Obama administration held a well-publicized love-fest with lobbyists for the health care industry.  It turns out that rather than a “game-changer,” the event was a fraud.  And the industry got burned.

At the time, President Obama called it a “a watershed event in the long and elusive quest for health care reform”:

Over the next 10 years — from 2010 to 2019 — [these industry lobbyists] are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year — an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion.

By an amazing coincidence, $2 trillion is just enough to pay for Obama’s proposed government takeover of the health care sector.

Yet The New York Times reports that isn’t the magnitude of spending reductions the lobbyists thought they were supporting:

Hospitals and insurance companies said Thursday that President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending… [C]onfusion swirled in Washington as the companies’ trade associations raced to tamp down angst among members around the country.

Health care leaders who attended the meeting…say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts…

My initial reaction to Monday’s fairly transparent media stunt was: “I smell a rat.  Lobbyists never advocate less revenue for their members.  Ever.” The lobbyists are proving me right, albeit slowly.  (Take your time, guys.  I don’t mind.)

The Obama administration seems a little less clear on that rule.  Again, The New York Times:

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said “the president misspoke” on Monday and again on Wednesday when he described the industry’s commitment in similar terms. After providing that account, Ms. DeParle called back about an hour later on Thursday and said: “I don’t think the president misspoke. His remarks correctly and accurately described the industry’s commitment.”

How did the industry find itself in this position? Politico reports:

The group of six organizations with a major stake in health care…had been working in secret for several weeks on a savings plan.

But they learned late last week that the White House wanted to go public with the coalition. One health care insider said: “It came together more quickly than it should have.” A health-care lobbyist said the participants weren’t prepared to go live with the news over the weekend, when the news of a deal, including the $2 trillion savings claim, was announced by White House officials to reporters.

Gosh, it’s almost like the White House strong-armed the lobbyists in order to create a false sense of agreement and momentum.  Pay no attention to that discord behind the curtain!

At the time, I also hypothesized that this “agreement” was a clever ploy by all parties to pressure a recalcitrant Congressional Budget Office to assume that the Democrat’s reforms would produce budgetary savings.  “Otherwise, health care reform is in jeopardy,” says Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT).  Turns out there was no agreement, and the industry was just being used.

American Hospital Association president Richard Umbdenstock was more right than he knew when he told that group’s 230 members:

There has been a tremendous amount of confusion and frankly a lot of political spin.

Merriam-Webster lists “to engage in spin control (as in politics)” as its seventh definition of the word “spin.”  Its second definition is “to form a thread by extruding a viscous rapidly hardening fluid — used especially of a spider or insect.” Which reminds me…

CORRECTION: My initial reaction to Monday’s media stunt – “I smell a rat” – was transcribed incorrectly.  It should have read, “I smell arachnid.”

(HT: Joe Guarino for the pointers.)

Topics: 
Cato Publications, Government and Politics, Health Care

More on that Massachusetts ‘Model’

By
Michael D. Tanner

Amid reports that the Obama administration, congress, and some conservative groups still consider Massachusetts to be a model for health care reform, the New York Times reveals that despite assessing insurers and hospitals, raising the penalty on noncompliant businesses, increasing premiums and co-payments for consumers, and raising the state tobacco tax, the program’s financing remains unsustainable.

Massachusetts has significantly reduced the number of people in the state who lack health insurance. However, it has not achieved, nor does it expect to reach, universal coverage. (The best estimates suggest that more than 200,000 state residents remain uninsured). And, significantly, roughly 60 percent of newly insured state residents are receiving subsidized coverage, suggesting that the increase in insurance coverage has more to do with increased subsidies (the state now provides subsidies for those earning up to 300 percent of the poverty level or $66,150 for a family of four) than with the mandate.

The cost of those subsidies in the face of predictably rising health care costs has led to program costs far higher than originally predicted. Spending for the Commonwealth Care subsidized program has doubled, from $630 million in 2007 to an estimated $1.3 billion for 2009.

Now the state is turning to a variety of gimmicks to try to hold down costs, including possibly cutting payments to physicians and hospitals by 3-5 percent. However, the Times quotes health reform experts who have studied the Massachusetts system as warning “the state and federal governments may need to place actual limits on health spending, which could lead to rationing of care.”

The more one looks at the Massachusetts “model,” the stronger the argument for keeping the government out of health care.

Topics: 
Health Care

Len Nichols Is Wrong: This Debate Is about Socialized Medicine

By
Michael F. Cannon

Over at “The New Health Dialogue Blog,” my friend Len Nichols writes:

I am disappointed to hear the health reform conversation devolve once again into a contrived debate about a single payer, government-run health system. This is an old dispute about “socialized medicine” and one that has already been settled in the minds of a critical mass of policymakers.

A couple of things strike me about his post.

First, this debate is obviously about socialized medicine, and to argue anything else is absurd. We have a president who advocates single-payer. That president just held a health care summit to which he invited other single-payer advocates, but not a single free-market advocate. As I explain in this paper, all the bluster about “public-private partnerships” is an intellectually dishonest smokescreen. Nichols and other members of the Church of Universal Coverage hate the term “socialized medicine” not because it inaccurately describes their policies, but because it accurately describes their policies and rankles a large segment of the American public. Rather than adjust their policies, they are trying to convince the public that policies generally considered socialist really aren’t.

Second, this “old dispute” obviously has not been “settled in the minds of a critical mass of policymakers.” If that mass of opinion were truly critical, then (by definition) the fact that some are crying “socialized medicine” wouldn’t bother Nichols at all.

I think I’ll shoot my friend an email and invite him to speak at a Cato Institute policy forum where we can discuss whether President Obama is trying to move us closer to socialized medicine.

Topics: 
Cato Publications, Health Care

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