Medicare´s Victims

American Spectator ^ | 7/6/2015 | David Catron

[rootin tootin]

Despite the Supreme Court’s repeated attempts to prop it up, Obamacare is collapsing. This is obvious not merely to the majority of Americans who have always disapproved of the law, but also to an increasing number of progressives. Consequently, we are once again hearing calls for single-payer health care. Most advocates of this system, including Hillary Clinton’s main competitor for the 2016 Democrat presidential nomination, favor Medicare-for-All. They want, in other words, to put all Americans on the government program that covers the elderly and disabled. An excellent antidote for this simplistic solution is David Hogberg’s new book, Medicare’s Victims: How the U.S. Government’s Largest Health Care Program Harms Patients and Impairs Physicians.

Hogberg, a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, explodes the myth that Medicare coverage is consonant with cost effectiveness, high quality care, and satisfied patients. He combines the stories of beneficiaries harmed by the program with an analysis of its perverse incentives and unsustainable costs. Hogberg also proposes reforms based on the principle that “beneficiaries should exercise ultimate control over how Medicare funds are spent.” In fact, he advocates giving the money directly to the patients ... Is it crazy to give Medicare funds directly to patients? Well, as Hogberg points out, this is precisely how Social Security works: “Beneficiaries receive their checks… each month and then have complete discretion over how to spend it.”

[Junk Silver]

“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program... That’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we’ve got to take back the White House, we’ve got to take back the Senate, and we’ve got to take back the House.”

Senator Barack Obama 2003

[oblomov]

Medicare isn’t single-payer health care.

[Fresh Wind]

“We must have universal health care I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one..The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower costs to companies paying for the medical care of their employees. If the program were in place in Massachusetts in 1999, it would have reduced administrative costs by $2.5 million. We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.”

Donald Trump 2000

[cymbeline]

“Despite the Supreme Court’s repeated attempts to prop it up...”

Cruz was asked why Roberts supported changing the meaning of that phrase in the legislation. Cruz said he figured Roberts wanted to keep the Supreme Court out of politics. That is, Roberts believes if the law is to be changed, it is up to the Legislature to do it, not the Supreme Court.

Fine, but why then didn’t the Supreme Court say exactly that in their decision, letting the law stand as-is and passing the ball to the Legislature to make changes.

[sphinx]

Roberts took the view that Congress intended that people have access to subsidies, which is true, but ignored the question of how, which is (was) important.

The principal authors of Obamacare wanted single payer, but didn't have the votes. Short of single payer, they wanted a federal option or a national exchange, but didn't have the votes. So they settled on state exchanges, with the states incentivized to participate "voluntarily." This is a common means of dragooning the states into federal programs, but it didn't work this time.

What the majority of the Court has now done is give the advocates of Obamacare the national exchange that they clearly lacked the votes to enact at the time.

[cymbeline]

“Roberts took the view that Congress intended that people have access to subsidies”

Isn’t that a tricky statement since Congress operates to express its intent through legislation. Could you possibly mean that the architects of Obamacare rather than Congress intended that people have access to subsidies?

[sphinx]

I think it is correct that a majority of Congress intended that people have access to subsidies. But the method is also critically important, since there was clearly NOT a majority for single payer, or a federal option, or a national exchange. The state exchanges were the only way a majority could be cobbled together to pass the bill at all. In reading state exchanges as authorization for a national exchange, the Supreme Court is clearly contravening the will of the majority of Congress, and replacing it with a factional position that never commanded majority support.

[cymbeline]

“I think it is correct that a majority of Congress ...”

Guess the birth of the Affordable Care Act was an example of the end justifying the means, plus a lot of liberal momentum.

I hope we don’t go the way of Greece. Total healthcare would be a no brainer if money grew on trees.