Health insurance: myths and financing
Via the Health Affairs blog, here are links to two articles relating to major issues of health-insurance reform.
The first addresses five "myths" about health insurance. For example, Myth No. 2: Covering The Uninsured Pays For Itself By Reducing Expensive And Inefficient Emergency Room Care. Not so much, it turns out, except in some cases in which management of chronic conditions is cheaper than treating acute problems in the ER. Diabetes is one example.
The second, by Jonathan Oberlander of UNC-Chapel Hill, discusses the politics of health-care reform. Oberlander spoke March 10 in Greensboro on a similar topic at a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters.
There's some good stuff to chew on in each article. But they present formidable obstacles to some of the most-discussed possible solutions to America's health care/health insurance crisis and, by implication, call upon experts to look beyond the conventional wisdom for real solutions.
Relatedly, at The Health Care Blog, Jacob Hacker touts a book which he edited and to which he contributed that examines various problems with health care. Among other things, he says that to suggest the government has no money to reform health care
... has it exactly backward. To the extent that we’re worried about the budget and the future of our economy, health care reform is more vital, not less so.For starters, our long-term deficit problem is really a health care spending problem. If you take health care programs out of the equation, there is literally no other long-term federal budget problem. None. No Social Security crisis. No out-of-control-earmarks catastrophe. No deficits as far the eye can see.
I haven't read the book, so I'm reserving judgment. But his description raises some provocative points, and if he's accurate, then he and his co-authors are pointing to a welcome way out of the current long-term financial stress the government faces.
