US health care costs

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United States: health issues: health care costs

[edit] Overview

Health care costs are a major problem in the United States. Many possible solutions have been advanced, but very little progress has been made towards settling on any given solution, and the problem continues to get worse.
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[edit] Framing

The problem is often politically framed as a choice between a "nanny state", i.e. a single-payer system operated essentially by the government – an idea generally loathed by conservatives, or the more "free enterprise" system which we supposedly have now. This is actually a false dilemma, as pointed out in the following comment:

Catfish N. Cod said, on 2008-02-15:

Health care costs in the US are absolutely insane, it's true. But it's not a MARKET that leads to insanely high prices. If we actually had a health care MARKET then supply and demand would drive costs down -- especially with the massive influx of doctors and nurses from everywhere on Earth that want to take advantage of high US health care spending.

But the health care MARKET mostly doesn't exist. When was the last time you found out what anything about your health care cost -- BEFORE you received the product? How about a posting of what the competition was charging? An estimate of the insurance company's share?

Having a MARKET -- one of Dr. Brin's "accountability fora" -- requires some basic elements, including:

  1. Fungibility of product -- it really doesn't matter who you buy from
  2. Posted prices -- no pigs in pokes
  3. Verifiability data -- no wool wrapped in silk
  4. Ease of choice -- a cheap alternative does no good if it's up a dirt road in Tibet

If we had these things in health care, we could have a MARKET that would drive prices down. But that's the LAST thing we have today. Instead we have:

  1. Feudal and monopolistic organization of health care that makes choosing out-of-network doctors difficult and expensive
  2. Complete obscurity of price -- I'm in med school and I can't figure out my own med bills
  3. Poor data collection, poor analysis, and a lot of covering-up in med quality data -- driven in large part by fear of lawsuits
  4. Lack of choice -- often a single organization controls all the hospitals in a region

Now, with some transparency regulation, portions of the medical system could become a MARKET, causing price wars to eliminate the exorbitant charges. The problem with a single-payer system is that, by itself, single-payer grants no transparency. I don't trust bureaucrats to negotiate behind closed doors in my name, and I don't care if they are public or private bureaucrats. I want to be able to see the cost savings, dang nabbit. Transparency forever!

[edit] Links

[edit] Filed Links

  • 2008-03-07 /S/D/ Freedom Means Responsibility by George McGovern: “Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages.” McGovern's point about pay-day lending seems related to the point others have made about outsourcing: the terms (be that interest or wages) may seem completely abusive by our standards, but may seem a godsend (or at least far better than the alternatives) to those who choose them.
  • 2008-01-25 /S/D/ Dental Decay: The Hidden Health Crisis by Katrina vanden Heuvel, TheNation.com: “Last Spring, following the death of twelve-year old Deamonte Driver of Maryland whose untreated tooth infection spread to his brain, I wrote about the national epidemic of dental disease and the lack of access to dental care faced by the poor and working class. Last month, an article in The New York Times painted a horrifying picture of the state of dental care, where bootleggers sell dentures that would otherwise be unaffordable to many people missing teeth; where low Medicaid reimbursement rates perpetuate a dearth of participating dentists; where untreated cavities are a leading cause of kids missing school, people use Krazy Glue to reattach broken teeth, or swish rubbing alcohol to treat an infection, "burning the gums and creating ulcers." .. Currently, Medicaid only covers pulling teeth to treat infections -- not root canals or dentures -- which can certainly dim the job prospects for someone trying to earn a living in our economy. .. "Try finding work when you're in your 30s or 40s and you're missing front teeth," Jane Stephenson, founder of the New Opportunity School in Berea, Kentucky told the Times.”
  • 2007-11-28 /S/D/ Obama Scoffs at Clinton War Claim “The issue of mandates for health care has driven the debate between Clinton and Obama for the past few weeks. Obama says he would enforce his mandate for health care for all children by fining parents if they refused to allow health care coverage for their children. .. "I am happy to be very clear how we enforce mandates for children, and the reason is because children don't have an option."” Jon Ham and other right-wingers [1][2] see this as being rather totalitarian, and a comment poster sees this as hypocrisy given the left's views on abortion (Obama presumably representing the left since he's a democrat). Did he actually say this? It seems inconsistent, and a search did not turn up any confirmation that the quote is accurate; this link appears to be the source of all the quotes. There doesn't seem to be anything in Obama's health plan about punishing parents for not signing their kids up, and it specifically says that clients would be able to choose whether or not to stay on their old plan. This page says "Like many other issues, Senator Clinton still refuses to tell the American people exactly how she will penalize them when they can't afford to purchase health insurance,' said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.", which implies heavily that Obama's plan does not obligate anyone to make that purchase.

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[edit] Opinion

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[edit] Quotes

The Rockridge Institute said:

The next instance of a conservative frame in a question was by co-host Scott Spradling:

SPRADLING: Thanks, Wolf. Senator Edwards, question for you, sir. I was struck by your conversation that you had a moment ago about dishonesty in politics, and wanting to make things clear. This is a health care question for you, and really focusing on price tags here. Governor Richardson, for example, says that you can fund health care meaningfully without raising taxes. Senator Clinton has said that she's not prepared to say she will raises taxes to reform health care. Your plan does raise some taxes to fund your universal health care program. So I am wondering: From your perspective, are they being honest about the true costs of universal health care in America?

This question was framed as if the "true costs" of health care mean only taxes! As Spradling hinted, the implementation of universal health care will require taxes to be raised. Operating within the conservative worldview, Spradling implied that taxes are always bad. Rockridge has previously discussed the conservative view of taxes. In the conservative worldview, taxes are interpreted as a burden that the government must lighten (as opposed to the progressive view that taxes contribute to infrastructure, protection, and citizen empowerment). In any direct "answer" to the question, the conservative framing is accepted.

The question also suggested that taxes are the only "costs" of a national health care system, effectively ignoring the progressive notion that there are similar costs to society for not implementing universal health care. There are costs to the labor market, costs to doctors and nurses, costs to rural communities, and human costs. The U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world due to our lack of pre and post-natal care. We rank 33rd in life expectancy for males and 32nd in life expectancy for females. These statistics should have been presented as the "costs" of not implementing a wide-reaching health care policy for U.S. citizens.

And none of this even gets to the fact that federal taxes don't pay for government operations but are all used to service the national debt...

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