Improving Health Care

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124775966602252285-lMyQjAxMDI5NDE3NzcxNTc5Wj.html

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124779717982855785-lMyQjAxMDI5NDE3NzcxOTc3Wj.html

Before I remark on this issue again, I want to salute two "Followers" of this blog for their comments on our "45 Million" post: Dale and Craig - outstanding commentary and insight! I have been blessed over recent years to have had some brilliant students who claim to have been inspired by me and I consider that the highest compliment I could be paid. Read that post with the comments and it gives an excellent perspective.

Health care is a "business" and the big insurance companies that are in that business run their companies for the bottom line which makes the stockholders happy (apply that remark to the drug companies, etc.). What will make this decade's effort to improve the health care system successful, is if the "insurers" and the doctors that are part of the system weigh in on what will work. On Thursday, the American Medical Association (AMA) threw its support behind the House proposal on health care. In May, excited administration officials called Paul Krugman to say that the "medical-industrial complex" (their words, not Krugman's) was offering to be helpful. At that time, six major industry players sent a letter to President Obama sketching out a plan to control health care costs (this includes the major insurers and pharmaceutical firms). What's going on here is that the key interest groups have realized that health care reform is going to happen no matter what they do, so the idea is to try to influence a reasonable outcome.

This is pragmatic and it's good stuff (that's a business term). First attached is an article in today's WSJ on testimony on Thursday by Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, that the main health care proposals would fail to contain costs and could actually worsen the problem of rapidly escalating medical spending. This goes back to the two pronged goal of the President's proposals: expand health care insurance and curb runaway costs. My perspective on this is that health care "opportunity" in this country can be improved without runaway costs - that will require cooperation and compromise. But, if we are going to "expand health care insurance", we are going to have increased costs.

The devil is always in the details but there are key congressmen and senators who should be heard on what needs changing (like removing lifetime "caps" on medical insurance, or "cessions" - the insurance industry term [I am not an expert here so please correct me if the term is differently spelled] for dropping individuals from coverage because their use rate is too high: last year 20,000 people lost their medical insurance for this reason): and they ARE.

The second article attached (again in today's WSJ) refers to the recklessness of congress because of the potential "costs" of health care legislation. A new effective tax rate of 52% would not be welcome to anyone, but calling the efforts to improve health care (and/or its availability) a reckless disregard for economic and fiscal reality is a little much. All sides are "trying". Let's give them credit and let's hope something positive happens.