Government health care is neither compassionate and equitable

Canada's ObamaCare Precedent - Governments always ration care by making you wait. That can be deadly.

Excerpts:

Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery -- described by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain."

Only half of ER patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc.

Overall, according to a study published in Lancet Oncology last year, five-year cancer survival rates are higher in the U.S. than those in Canada. Based on data from the Joint Canada/U.S. Survey of Health (done by Statistics Canada and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics), Americans have greater access to preventive screening tests and have higher treatment rates for chronic illnesses. No wonder: To limit the growth in health spending, governments restrict the supply of health care by rationing it through waiting. The same survey data show, as June and Paul O'Neill note in a paper published in 2007 in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy, that the poor under socialized medicine seem to be less healthy relative to the nonpoor than their American counterparts.

Ironically, as the U.S. is on the verge of rushing toward government health care, Canada is reforming its system in the opposite direction. In 2005, Canada's supreme court struck down key laws in Quebec that established a government monopoly of health services. Claude Castonguay, who headed the Quebec government commission that recommended the creation of its public health-care system in the 1960s, also has second thoughts. Last year, after completing another review, he declared the system in "crisis" and suggested a massive expansion of private services -- even advocating that public hospitals rent facilities to physicians in off-hours.

....

In Canada, private-sector health care is growing. Dr. Day estimates that 50,000 people are seen at private clinics every year in British Columbia. According to the New York Times, a private clinic opens at a rate of about one a week across the country. Public-private partnerships, once a taboo topic, are embraced by provincial governments.

In the United Kingdom, where socialized medicine was established after World War II through the National Health Service, the present Labour government has introduced a choice in surgeries by allowing patients to choose among facilities, often including private ones. Even in Sweden, the government has turned over services to the private sector.

Americans need to ask a basic question: Why are they rushing into a system of government-dominated health care when the very countries that have experienced it for so long are backing away?

Comment: Soon coming .... Obamacare!

How wage and price controls fostered health insurance

Why Tie Health Insurance to a Job? One thing we can all agree on is that portable coverage is more secure.

Excerpt:

Employers didn't start offering health benefits roughly 60 years ago because they were experts in medical decisions. It was a way of circumventing the World War II wage and price controls. Barred from offering higher salaries to attract workers, employers offered health insurance instead. Aided by an IRS ruling that said workers who received health benefits did not have to pay income taxes on them, and by the fact that employers could write off the cost of the health benefits as a business related expense, this accidental arrangement became the primary way most Americans access health care.

The system worked at first, but a lot has changed in 60 years. Back then, the average soldier returning from World War II took a job with a local company where he would work for decades until he got a gold watch at a big retirement party. Today, lifetime employment is dead. By 42, the average American will change jobs 11 times.

Sixty years ago, most American companies competed only against neighboring companies for lucrative contracts. Today, most businesses are up against foreign companies that don't foot the bill for their employees' health-care costs.

Comment: Interesting about how health care benefits were a way to circumvent wage and price controls. Can any of my readers verify that this is fact?

Healthcare 101: NJ versus FL

The Florida Revelation . . .

Excerpts:

Mr. Crist observed that state regulations increase the cost of health coverage, and thus rightly decided to do away with at least some of them. It's hard to believe, but this qualifies as a revelation in the policy world of health insurance. The new benefit packages will be introduced sometime next year and include minimum coverage for primary care and catastrophic expenses for major illness.
...
Some 13 states currently offer bare-bones policies on a full or trial-run basis. While not a cure-all, they're movement in the right direction – especially as the states can't do anything about the continuing tax bias for employer-provided health insurance. That kind of much-needed change can only come from Washington, as John McCain is proposing.

The Florida success also shows the political benefits when Republicans talk seriously about health care. Mr. Crist has made increasing consumer choice a signature issue. When Mr. McCain talked up his health-care reforms earlier this spring, he did so in Tampa. He chose the right state.



. . . And Escape From New Jersey

Excerpt:

The average national cost for a family health plan is $5,799, according to America's Health Insurance Plans, but in New Jersey that same plan costs $10,398 on average. The state's politicians have driven up these costs by forcing insurers to provide gold-plated coverage – even for such voluntary medical services as in vitro fertilization. New Jersey also follows New York and Massachusetts – two other high-cost states – in requiring so-called "guaranteed issue." That allows New Jersey residents to avoid buying health insurance until they get sick, which means they can avoid paying premiums until they need someone to pick up the bill.

This one-policy-fits-all system tends to cause the young and healthy to drop insurance, which only raises the cost of insurance for the sick, which in turn makes coverage unaffordable for ever more families. It's no accident that about 1.2 million people – one of every eight residents – is uninsured in the state.

Under Mr. Webber's choice proposal, New Jersey residents could buy policies chartered in more enlightened states. For example, a healthy 25-year-old male could buy a basic health plan in Kentucky that now sells for $960 a year, about one-sixth of the $5,880 it would cost him in New Jersey. Residents of Pennsylvania pay health premiums that are one-half to one-third as high as do Garden State policy-holders. A new study by the National Center for Policy Analysis estimates that the availability of lower cost plans would reduce by 25% the number of uninsured.

Opponents of interstate insurance say families would be pushed into bare-bones health plans. Not so. Families could still buy the more extensive coverage, but those with modest incomes would have options other than going uninsured. The goal of public policy shouldn't be to cover every medical procedure or doctor's visit, but to prevent families from catastrophic expenses due to a health problem that is no fault of their own.

Comment: Read both of these articles and ask yourself: Do I want healthcare choices? Do I want the government to "get out of the way"? Do I want a healthcare system run with the efficiency of the Post Office and the compassion of the IRS? These questions will help you frame your vote in November!

The Myth of the Uninsured

The Myth of the Uninsured

Excerpt:

The Census Bureau released a report this week, and it does some mighty powerful damage to the whole “47 million uninsured Americans” line we keep hearing from politicians. You know - those 47 million poor, down-on-their-luck, hard working American citizens who, according to Hillary!, Barack, and Johnny we need to pay for insurance for?

Well, that’s not exactly the whole story, according to the Census Bureau. They released some rather interesting facts - the two most important in my opinion being the following:

1. Of those 47 million uninsured, 38% of them make more than $50,000 a year. Over 20% of them make more than $75,000 a year.
   
2. Additionally, 27% of the uninsured aren’t even American citizens
   

---------
.... “a major reason for the uninsured “problem” is our failure to enforce our border.” Now that we have concrete evidence that the health insurance “crisis” in this country is in part directly linked to illegal immigration, any politician wishing to be taken seriously on the topic of health care had better be strong against illegal immigration as well.

Comment: I personally have known people who refused to buy health insurance when offered by an employer!

Backers of health plan for kids have other motives

Excerpt:

So ignore the politicians' rhetoric on SCHIP. Instead, look at what they approved and what they rejected. It becomes clear that expanding SCHIP isn't so much about helping poor, uninsured children get the coverage they need. Rather, it's an effort to chip away at private health coverage and move more and more people into a government-controlled health program.

The needy children, one fears, are just heart-rending props, meant to distract attention from the fact that Congress is moving ever closer to creating a government monopoly over health care.