Anyone want to bet that the numbers in the OP will turn out to be correct?
There isn’t really anything to comment on. The claim is false.
You say that like there is an objective truth. Facts are just opinions and we have to treat the claim evenhandedly and present both sides. Canada may or may not be ending its UHC system.
Since we may or may not be hit by an asteroid tomorrow, maybe it’s the right move. I’d rather we spend all our money on whores… or not.
In fact, I propose Universal Whore Benefits. “A hooker in every cot.”
No, this plan promises to deal with ‘waste’. Anyone who’s been around for a few decades can tell you that ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ are the standard go-to bogeymen used by politicians to promise spending cuts that don’t hurt anyone. They never happen.
You’re being sold a bill of goods - or rather, you’ve been handed a set of talking points to use to march out and help ‘prove’ that Obamacare is the best thing since sliced toast.
But there are still a few honest people in the government, such as the Medicare Actuary in the Department of Health and Human Services. His Report isn’t nearly as positive.
Among the things he finds unlikely:
- That health care will find 1.1% of productivity gains each year.
- That the 30% reduction in physicians fees will survive or be sustainable.
- That the medicare payment trajectory as outlined in the trustee’s report, which would have medicare payments to doctors being 1/2 of medicaid payments and 1/3 of private market rates within 75 years, is feasible or sustainable.
He does his own analysis using more realistic numbers, and comes up with a small savings under the new law, but nothing like the savings claimed. For example, under 2009 laws, medicare is expected to consume 11.18% of GDP by 2080. The trustees report says that under the new law it will only be 6.27% of GDP. The actuary’s analysis says that under the new law it will be 10.7% of GDP - not much different than the old way.
And remember, he’s just talking about Medicare, and not overall health care. The Democrats were counting on 500 billion in savings from Medicare to help pay for Obamacare. If that money doesn’t materialize, the deficit is going to explode even more.
Basically, they tried to cook the books and got called on it.
If course they won’t be correct. The question is whether they are a reasonable projection given reasonable assumptions, and fall more or less in the center of the numbers you get when changing assumptions. They might be way too high, if the health care system resists change, or way too low, if we start getting some decent efficiency in the system. The doctors we go to have a wide range of efficiency - if everyone started looking like the best in class one, there could be a lot of savings.
However, the responses of “if the government does it, it must be inefficient” aren’t much of a response, are they? “Rush says it and I believe it!” And I hope those who don’t believe in projections will stop ranting about Social Security going bankrupt - that is based on projections also. Which will of course be wrong too, but not wildly out of line if the demographics hold up.
I suspect you do things much better in Canada, but I see today massive difference in productivity between the doctors I go to. One allows you to look at test results and renew prescriptions on-line, another has massive file cabinets full of paper and the receipt we get is a scribbled carbon copy of a form. If the insurance companies finally agree to use a standard form, and best practices get implemented everywhere, this goal should be trivial to achieve.
Megan McArdle, aka “Jane Galt”, is a liberal.
You fail the Internet forever.
Damn, Sam beat me to it. The freaking chief actuary of Medicare says this report is full of shit–what response does the SDMB have? I expect a rousing chorus of indifference.
Yes, this does affect my argument negatively.
Seriously? Or are you playin’?
No, that is serious. Like I said in the OP, our out of control medical costs are the biggest problem with our public debt and private economic competitiveness. So if Obamacare could bend the cost curve and slow the rate of medical cost growth, that would arguably be the biggest accomplishment any administration has done in a long time.
However I have no idea what the alternative projections look like (ones that include the rejection of provider cost cuts and lower productivity gains)
Ironic, no?
By repeating this clueless zombie douchebag meme, you reveal yourself to be a complete and utter moron. Tolerate that.
Thank you for that. In return, I’ll say that the Medicare Actuary does say that the new program will wind up causing Medicare to cost less over time - just not as much as being claimed. At least he didn’t say that the new law was going to cause Medicare costs to explode.
Which you know is exactly what was going to happen if we did nothing. The point is it will result in the cost going down . That is better than up. It also deals with the companies who are cheating the system. That was seen as a cost of doing business before. Dealing like adults with a serious financial problem seems to many of us better than just maintaining a system that would bankrupt us.
Leslie Margolin, Former Blue Cross President, Speaks Out Against Insurance Giant's Plan To Spike Rates | HuffPost Latest News yes we are dealing with waste and costs in the health care bill we passed.
Here is Anthem jacking their rates up a mere 39 percent. That will provide the great coverage that Rover loves so much. They need it to get by, poor babies.
Without the bill, we are at the mercy of the heath care companies. To some people that is a price savings and a boon to coverage.
No, according to the Medicare actuary, if you had done nothing, Medicare would consume 11.18% of GDP by 2080. With ObamaCare, that number comes down to 10.7%, a big difference of .48% of GDP. Lower, but not so much lower that it really makes a difference. And that small difference is over a 70 year forecast, which almost certainly will not be accurate that far out - but it does give an indication of what the relative cost structure looks like between the two options, and it’s pretty trivial.
It does? How? Which companies are cheating the system, and how will this deal with them?
Let’s be clear about something - the costs we’ve been talking about are the costs to Medicare. The Obama administration was counting on those 500 billion in cuts to medicare to help pay for a NEW entitlement. If those cost savings don’t materialize, then Medicare’s budget outlook will be roughly the same as it was before - but the rest of the health care budget will add an additional $500 billion to the debt over the first ten years.
There is no overall cost reduction here - there’s a big cost increase. This only makes sense because the new plan covers more people and was bound to be more expensive. The administration tried to hide that expense by folding it into cuts in Medicare so it looked relatively revenue neutral. But it never was - if the cuts in Medicare were feasible, they could have been done without the new plan, and the country could have got Medicare expenses more under control. Instead, Obama took it and used it to fund part of the first ten years of the health care program.
Basically, the Democrats took the low-hanging fruit of Medicare’s potential cuts, and spent it in advance on a new entitlement. Even if it all came out as intended, that would make it harder to get Medicare costs under control because the low-hanging fruit would be gone. If the cuts don’t materialize, then this program makes the deficit worse and the entitlement problem worse.
There is no scenario that I can see under which the new health care plan saves the government any real money.
Health insurers are raising their premiums because the new mandates for pre-existing conditions are going to cost more money, and they’re passing that on to the consumer. Which many of us said would happen. This fall you’re going to see health care premiums go up dramatically.
You have for years. This is not new. They have a pile of profits and thieving execs are still looting the health care system for all they can squeeze. They are jacking it up now because they have to pay out 85 percent of their premiums in health care services down the line. They don’t want to. They like gobbling up 30 percent or more for themselves.
This health care system could work. The old one absolutely can not. It had a built in growth in costs that was not sustainable. But you know that. Hell everybody acknowledged that. The right wingers want it to fail for political reasons. It sucks but that is how they play.
For the first time in the history of our country, the United States has mandated that citizens purchase a product. Instead of the government and its leaders doing something about the root causes of the expense of medical care, they went this chickenshit route and mandates that everyone must own an insurance policy. Basically, the government is going in to the insurance game. Yea! Not.
The reason American healthcare is so fucked up is because of the GOVERNMENT, INSURANCE COMPANIES, and WELFARE BUMS. Illegal aliens or welfare mothers having multiple children. People who spent their lives throwing away their money on crap who are now broke who cry “Healthcare is a right”, and demands that they be cared for.
It costs about $100,000 dollars to attend medical school. That’s outrageous. Then to the people who graduate, must by stiffling malpractice insurance because of greasy lawyers who make money advertising on afternoon TV promising anyone a check if they have been “sick or injured”, no matter how frivilous the cause.
Medicaid and Medicare takes from young workers and gives it off to the elderly. Ok, sounds great on paper. However, our parents generation has been one of the prosperous not only in the United States, but in the history of man. 99% of the elderly can pay their own medical bills. If there was no insurance whatsoever, prices would be much lower. If the Mexican border was sealed like it should be, there would be billions saved in hospital visits.
Please show me all the elderly, sick and destitute people before 1930 who died on the streets because there was no social security, medicare, aid to irresponsible mothers with ugly children, Section 8 and all that other garbage that working people have to pay for.
It’s not time to “gloat” at all. Some people are going to get wealthy from this nightmare while the rest of us suffer. And fuck you very much for voting in this clown.