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Thursday, February 08, 2007
Health Care Wrongness
A note on a budget meme that needs to be done in.
The Washington Post:
Some of its approaches, particularly the effort to restrain the growth of Medicare through additional means-testing and cutting payments to providers, are commendable; they merit more serious consideration by Congress than they appear destined to receive.
The New York Times:
Sharp reductions are envisioned for Medicare, with cuts of $66 billion over five years, and Medicaid, down approximately $11 billion. Some of the Medicare proposals could serve as useful starting points for a debate on controlling costs through such steps as raising premiums for high-income beneficiaries.
Ok, let's consider this "means-testing" idea, whatever they mean. What does means-testing have to do with the primary cause of Medicare and Medicaid cost concerns? Nada, zilch, zippo. High prices are mostly making public and private health care so expensive in this country, and we have high prices because we don't have universal-ish health care insurance.
Means-testing programs would merely shift costs and only make the overall problem worse. It gives Medicare recipients an extra incentive to buy insurance on the private market and leave the public risk pool when they can. In fact, isn't that the reason why the NYT and so many others opposed -rightly- the Bush health care tax initiative? At least the WaPo is consistent in being wrong.
This is public policy 101 people. You don't need me to tell you to identify the cause of the problem first, and design the policy solution to address the cause. Leave the nice rich people alone and focus on the real problem.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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