Sunday, October 18, 2009
Congress / Politics / Woods Why Doesn't Bredesen Ever Talk About the Cost of Not Fixing Health Care?
Posted by Jeff Woods on Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 9:59 AM
We conclude that without significant reform that makes health insurance more accessible and affordable and reduces the rate of health care cost growth over time, the number of uninsured will increase and health care spending will increase dramatically. Without reform, the cost of financing public program growth will place added burden on taxpayers. The rising cost of caring for a growing number of uninsured through safety net programs will also add to taxpayer burdens. Employers will face sharply increasing health care premiums. This will eventually get passed onto the workforce in terms of lower wages but that will not happen instantaneously. In the short-term, business profitability is adversely affected. Finally, individuals and families will face higher out-of-pocket costs for premiums and for services along with higher tax burdens. We recognize that health reform itself will be costly. If enacted, government expenditures will increase by more than shown here because of increases in Medicaid enrollment and subsidies to low-income people--how much more depends on the cost containment provisions ultimately enacted. Employer spending will also grow, though it should be lower for small firms who have access to exchanges. Health reform will stem the continuous erosion in the number of Americans with health care coverage and reduce spending for a large number of lower income families. Reform will also decrease financial pressures on the hospitals and clinics that provide care to the uninsured, reduce many system inefficiencies, and ultimately improve the health and financial security of Americans. While enacting health reform will be difficult and expensive, the cost of failure is substantial and will be felt in every state.
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Bredesen hopes to force changes to the reform plan that take the burden off states, even if it means taxing some benefit packages. "The bottom line for me is, if they want to design a health-care reform in Washington, that's great," Bredesen said last week. "More power to them, but I think they should pay the bill."
Let's be fair. What Bredesen is saying is that the federal government should pay for reforms instituted by the federal government. They should not simply push the costs off on the states. That makes sense because the federal government can afford this. State governments can't.
As chief executive of a state, Bredesen is being responsible raising these concerns. He isn't arguing against health care reform.
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Oh yes, he's all for universal health care (as long as he doesn't have to come up with any extra cash to help pay for it). How is that responsible? The feds say they'll pay 90 percent of the newly eligible Medicaid recipients. That's not enough for Bredesen, the guy who has refused to do anything about our unfair and inadequate tax system throughout all his years as governor.
Is Bredesen going back into the HMO business once he leaves office, or is he just going to retire?
Bredesen has the same problem that Scalia has, only on different matters: a fundamental lack of empathy for those in his moral/intellectual blind spot.
In other words, despite the party label, he's just another conservative.
Take Bredesen out of this for a moment and just focus on the issue itself. Of COURSE the cost of not fixing healthcare is unsustainable. But simply shifting a lot of costs to the states and saying we fixed it is not really a fix, either. It's just a fiction. I'm afraid that's where we're heading. The debate about a genuine fix to the system is over, and now the politicians are simply talking about passing something that allows them to take credit for reforming the system. None of the "reforms" that appear likely to get through Congress, if they manage even to do that, will fundamentally change the drivers that are sending healthcare costs through the roof. If we don't do something about costs, ultimately it won't matter how many uninsured people we've added to the system, even though it is morally wrong to leave so many people uninsured.
Creating another new massive entitlement program does not constitute "fixing healthcare".
The existing entitlement programs are unsustainable and a big part of the reason that costs have been increasing for those who do have private insurance - via cost shifting from Medicare and Medicaid.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If more people are going to be getting something for nothing or for a reduced, subsidized rate than was previously the case, then there are going to be increased costs and somebody is going to get stuck paying them.
