When the Affordable Care Act was debated in Congress, and even earlier as progressives geared up for the fight, public health advocates often repeated the phrase, “health coverage will not be affordable until everyone has coverage.” The idea was that forcing everyone to have similar coverage, while charging similar rates, would somehow make coverage affordable. Or at least it would make coverage affordable for those with pre-existing conditions, if not for those who were healthier. I recently ran across someone who is blaming the high cost of Obamacare on the repeal of the individual mandate. Absent was any discussion about poorly crafted plan design, a multiplicity of mandated benefits and costly regulations.
Category: Doctors & Hospitals
What It Took to Become a Doctor on the Texas Frontier
In the early 1800s just about anyone could claim to be a doctor regardless of medical training.
Why patients don’t care about health care prices
In the vast majority of cases, when a person goes to a doctor or hospital or walks up to a pharmacy counter, someone else — an employer, health insurer or government — is paying most or all the cost. That system once spurred former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) to claim that if he paid for groceries the same way we pay for health care, he would eat better and so would his dog.
Tuesday Links
- Berwick, et. al. on how to fix American health care: more socialism.
- How one medical intervention can cascade into more interventions.
- Senate Democrats oppose prior authorization in traditional Medicare.
- The problem for doctors and patients is that the vast majority of cardiac arrest cases occur in lower-risk individuals without heart failure or known heart disease.
- Why do we continue to fund Head Start when studies show it doesn’t work? Because it’s a jobs program.