Joshs Blog

From Investors.com.

The results are clear: Since 1970 — even without the prescription drug benefit — Medicare’s costs have risen 34% more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid, the vast majority of which is purchased through the private sector.

Since 1970, the per-patient costs of all health care apart from Medicare and Medicaid have risen from $364 to $7,119, while Medicare’s per-patient costs have risen from $368 to $9,634. Medicare’s costs have risen $2,511 more per patient.

These conclusions are true despite very generous treatment of Medicare. My study counts Medicare’s prescription drug expenditures as part of privately purchased care, rather than as part of Medicare. It counts health care purchased privately by Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries (including Medicare copayments and Medigap insurance) among the costs of private care, without counting its recipients among those receiving private care — thereby magnifying private care’s per-person costs. And it doesn’t adjust for cost-shifting from Medicare to private entities.

Josh Kirkendall Politics health care

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don’t unthinkingly approve “additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care.

He added: “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”

Obama said he has personal familiarity with such a dilemma. His grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given less than nine months to live, he said.

She fell and broke her hip, “and the question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?”

That was during ABC News’ special about ObamaCare (or Infomercial). Here’s what the elderly should look forward to.

Medical decisions should be made by patients, their families, and their doctors, not by government bureaucrats, but that’s ObamaCare for you.

In the Washington Examiner, “Guillaume Vuillemey, a researcher at France’s Institut Economique Molinari, and Philip Stevens, a researcher at Britain’s International Policy Network write”:

The Obama plan is supposed to make health insurance more competitive. But heavy subsidies will give it a big advantage, pulling an estimated 118.5 million people from private insurers to the public system. This government-subsidized system will eventually dominate the market in a way that would overrule competition.

This is precisely what happened in Britain. The state provides most health care, via the National Health Service. Patients have almost no say over which physician, surgeon or hospital they can use, while professionals have to conform to government plans and targets.

After its birth in 1948, planners soon found that “free” health care multiplied demand. NHS founder Lord Beveridge predicted free health care would cut spending as health improved.

The opposite was true. Between 1949 and 1979, it tripled in real terms. The service now costs twice as much as it did 10 years ago, with productivity down 4.5 percent.

One way government tries to limit demand is to decree which new drugs can be prescribed. Many drugs, widely available in America and continental Europe, are denied to British patients.

State mismanagement has also created waiting lines for hospitals, on average causing 8.6 weeks of waiting. Once inside, budgetary cutbacks on cleaning and maintenance mean higher rates of an antibiotic-resistant variety of staph infection. This “superbug” has turned even routine surgery into a lottery of death.

Britain may be an extreme example. Many point to France as a better example of public insurance delivering high-quality, equitable care. While it’s true that French patients do enjoy better care and shorter waits than the British, this is due to a far greater reliance on independent health care and greater freedom from government for doctors and patients.

Yet this plus side is expensive. The French government is trying to control costs by increasing regulation of the private sector, meaning it will soon become more similar to Britain.

In France, there are already “medical deserts,” particularly in the suburbs and countryside. In some places, patients wait more than six months to see an ophthalmologist.

Josh Kirkendall Politics health care, obama