Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Do profits hurt health care?
[Gene Callahan and Robert Murphy, "Nationalized Health Care Will Cut Costs? It Just Ain’t So!," The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, January 2004.]
This is a good column addressing the recent media attention surrounding calls for a "single-payer" system of nationalized health care. Basically, the idea is that without the need to satisfy investors, governments can more efficiently provide health care while at the same time extending coverage to more of the uninsured.
The authors of this column are quick to point out that government provision of health care would be no different than government provision of any product--inefficient, slow, and inadequate:
A group called Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is promoting a government insurance plan to cover all Americans. In an August 13, 2003, Los Angeles Times report, the group claimed that their “single payer” plan would eliminate $200 billion a year in “administrative, marketing and other private-industry expenses.” This would save enough “to provide health care to the 41 million Americans who now lack coverage.”
Why then, we wonder, wouldn’t similar plans be in order for other consumer goods? Why shouldn’t Americans have a nationalized, single-payer plan for, say, food? If we could save $200 billion a year in health care, couldn’t we save billions in “private-industry expenses” for victuals? After all, if we visit the PNHP’s website, we learn that “[p]rofit seeking inevitably distorts care and diverts resources from patients to investors.” This argument should be just as applicable to other industries, for example: “profit seeking inevitably distorts feeding and diverts resources from diners to investors.” The logical conclusion of the idea is to nationalize the entire economy, saving trillions! We all know how well such ideas worked out in the Soviet Union, Mongolia, Albania, and North Korea.
[Richard B. Warner, M.D., "How Would You Like Your Medicine?," The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy, 24 July 1999.]
[Gene Callahan and Robert Murphy, "Nationalized Health Care Will Cut Costs? It Just Ain’t So!," The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, January 2004.]
This is a good column addressing the recent media attention surrounding calls for a "single-payer" system of nationalized health care. Basically, the idea is that without the need to satisfy investors, governments can more efficiently provide health care while at the same time extending coverage to more of the uninsured.
The authors of this column are quick to point out that government provision of health care would be no different than government provision of any product--inefficient, slow, and inadequate:
A group called Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is promoting a government insurance plan to cover all Americans. In an August 13, 2003, Los Angeles Times report, the group claimed that their “single payer” plan would eliminate $200 billion a year in “administrative, marketing and other private-industry expenses.” This would save enough “to provide health care to the 41 million Americans who now lack coverage.”
Why then, we wonder, wouldn’t similar plans be in order for other consumer goods? Why shouldn’t Americans have a nationalized, single-payer plan for, say, food? If we could save $200 billion a year in health care, couldn’t we save billions in “private-industry expenses” for victuals? After all, if we visit the PNHP’s website, we learn that “[p]rofit seeking inevitably distorts care and diverts resources from patients to investors.” This argument should be just as applicable to other industries, for example: “profit seeking inevitably distorts feeding and diverts resources from diners to investors.” The logical conclusion of the idea is to nationalize the entire economy, saving trillions! We all know how well such ideas worked out in the Soviet Union, Mongolia, Albania, and North Korea.
[Richard B. Warner, M.D., "How Would You Like Your Medicine?," The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy, 24 July 1999.]
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Consumer-driven health benefits work for the very sick
["Benefits of a Consumer-Driven Health Care System," Daily Policy Digest (Dallas, TX: The National Center for Policy Analysis, 27 January 2004).]
In this Daily Policy Digest from NCPA, the savings possible for the very sick from consumer-directed health benefits are revealed. These benefits, such as health savings accounts, have often been criticized for supposedly only "cherry picking" the healthy. As NCPA points out, a new study in the latest issue of Health Affairs shows this is not the case.
[Richard B. Warner, M.D., "Relief From Health Care Inflation," The Kansas Physician, September / October 2002.]
["Benefits of a Consumer-Driven Health Care System," Daily Policy Digest (Dallas, TX: The National Center for Policy Analysis, 27 January 2004).]
In this Daily Policy Digest from NCPA, the savings possible for the very sick from consumer-directed health benefits are revealed. These benefits, such as health savings accounts, have often been criticized for supposedly only "cherry picking" the healthy. As NCPA points out, a new study in the latest issue of Health Affairs shows this is not the case.
[Richard B. Warner, M.D., "Relief From Health Care Inflation," The Kansas Physician, September / October 2002.]
