Big Government Health Care PSA

Deconstructing Health Care “Waste” Numbers

By Brian McQuain

QandO.net

We found out recently that the government perpetrated myth that the health insurance industry were a bunch of “robber barons” was a load. So how about this point that it likes to push about “waste” in our health care system?

Well Reuters obligingly publishes an article today entitled, “Healthcare system wastes up to $800 billion a year.”

The estimate is actually 505 to 800 billion but why not go with the higher number when your “perspective” is to support government reform. Anyway:

The U.S. healthcare system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies, preventing mistakes and fighting fraud, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Monday.

The U.S. healthcare system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, the report from Robert Kelley, vice president of healthcare analytics at Thomson Reuters, found.

“America’s healthcare system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars, and the opportunities to slow the fiscal bleeding are substantial,” the report reads.

“The bad news is that an estimated $700 billion is wasted annually. That’s one-third of the nation’s healthcare bill,” Kelley said in a statement.

So now we have 3 numbers to go with telling anyone with an ounce of sense that they’re really not sure how much waste there is. But for the sake of argument, let’s stick with the 800 billion. Obviously they intend too because this is the sop they’re going to throw out there and claim it will “pay” for their “reform”.

Senate Health Care Bill Will See 1/3 Of US On Welfare

By Bruce McQuain

QandO.net

That’s a truly stunning number. 90 million will be on either SCHIP or Medicaid (not Medicare … Medicaid) if the Senate Finance version of health care becomes ObamaCare according to the Heritage Foundation:

But of those 29 million with new insurance coverage, almost half (14 million), will get their coverage through the welfare programs Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). That is equivalent to adding every resident of Ohio and Nevada to the welfare rolls.

In other words, for half of those Americans who are being promised health reform, they are going to be stunned to find themselves in a welfare office applying for Medicaid. Under the current baselines for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), there will be 76 million individuals served by these programs for at least some part of the year in 2019. If the SFC proposal becomes law, the number on Medicaid/SCHIP will top 90 million.

White House Previews Obama Health Care Speech

The Baucus Plan For Expanded Health Insurance Coverage

By Bruce McQuain

QandO.net

This is the culmination of a “year of work” by Sen. Max Baucus. And the cost? Well much less than the House version if you’re to believe the Senators who put it together. Instead of 1.5 trillion, this one will only cost us 850 to 900 billion over 10 years – another sum we cannot afford.

Why is this version less costly than the House version? Well they’re going to tax insurance companies.

Yes, I hear you. I know you know what it really means. But for the benefit of those on the left who stop by here to troll instead of taking the time to learn basic economics, we’ll again restate what should be obvious.

Corporations don’t pay taxes. Their customers do. The buck doesn’t start or stop with them – they just pass them along.

A recent report by Oppenheimer & Company, the investment bank, said, “It will be very difficult for the Senate Finance Committee to structure the fees in a way that they won’t be immediately passed on to customers in the form of higher premiums.”

Of course it will be difficult for that committee to structure them that way since it has no desire to do so:

Privacy – With Health Care, Not A Priority

By Bruce McQuain

http://www.qando.net

The left certainly likes to give the right of privacy at least lip service as they tell you what you should be concerned with concerning government. But when it concerns something they want, privacy isn’t such an important right.

HR 3200, the infamous house health care insurance bill apparently proves that point quite handily. Nestled within its 1,000 plus pages is a provision, on top of all the other provisions noted previously, that should give real privacy rights advocates pause:

Section 431(a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and “other information as is prescribed by” regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for “affordability credits.”

Section 245(b)(2)(A) says the IRS must divulge tax return details — there’s no specified limit on what’s available or unavailable — to the Health Choices Commissioner. The purpose, again, is to verify “affordability credits.”

Section 1801(a) says that the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a “low-income prescription drug subsidy” but has not applied for it.

Of course the Privacy Act, that inconvenient law that requires agencies to get information not from other agencies but from the individual, is being pointedly ignored here. In fact, reading above, you’d think our “lawmakers” were completely unaware of their own laws.

Given most of them haven’t even read the bill, you’d be exactly right. Additionally, we find out that not all health care insurance reform is contained in the pending versions of health care insurance legislation:

A better candidate for a future privacy crisis is the so-called stimulus bill enacted with limited debate early this year. It mandated the “utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014,” but included only limited privacy protections.

That’s right – already passed into law, in the “stimulus” bill, and without any debate, is a mandate for the use of electronic health records.

Sound like “representative government” at work for you? Or does it sound like an increasingly intrusive government discarding your privacy for the sake of its own hoped for efficiency? Not that such access will provide a more efficient bureaucracy, but it sure will provide that bureaucracy with almost unlimited access to tax information about you and your family.

And that’s without ever getting into what this “Health Choices Commissar Commissioner” is supposed to do. Wouldn’t Orwell have a field day with all of this?

Health Care Counseling: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Via 20C

Thanks!

“Savings will require changing how doctors think about their patients” – Ezekiel Emanuel

By Vincent Gioia

“Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (Ezekiel Emanuel, Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Photo used under Creative Commons from gloskeith

Would you vote for a person to be president if you knew that when elected he would appoint someone who thought and said this? Obama did so. The President appointed Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. Emanuel added to his comments that Doctors take their jobs too seriously and need to change to reduce costs – “Savings will require changing how doctors think about their patients,” he wrote.

Emanuel knows that the cuts will not be pain-free. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,” he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else. You know what this means; if you are old it’s not cost effective to keep you alive, the money is better spent on a younger person. In the world of Obamacare no longer will doctors try to keep patients alive, they will be told that a doctor’s job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Congress should not rush through something as important as changing our healthcare system

By Vincent Gioia

In the finest tradition of the car salesman who says “Here is my final offer but you have to take it right now,” House and Senate Democrats at the urging of President Obama want to push through legislation by the end of August that will transform Americans’ health care, probably irreversibly. Imagine; a complete overhaul of medical care in the United States, said to be about one-sixth of the total US economy, to be rushed through congress with virtually no review, analysis or deliberation by the Senate and House. More time is likely spent on mundane things like national recognition of one or the other organization or person than on something as important as enacting a system that will change how Americans receive medical care in the future or, indeed, whether or not they will receive any healthcare at all.

Until now opposition has focused almost entirely on the cost of the Democrat/Obama healthcare plans. Although the cost is a legitimate issue to consider, there are far worse things in store for Americans if the Democrats are successful. [This will be addressed in a future article,]

At an estimated cost of $1.5 trillion, there is no doubt that Americans will be required to shoulder enormous tax burdens. However the purported cost estimate is specious; the actual cost will like be twice or more this estimate. Add the cost of the healthcare program to already-incurred other costs of the no stimulus “Stimulus Bill and other spending for the budget deficit, TARP, et al, and you have a total expenditure and deficit which is unimaginable even in modern times.