A Cost-Control Mirage

[IndianaGreen]

A Cost-Control Mirage

Obama is telling people what they want to hear about health care, not what they need to know.

By Robert J. Samuelson | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Mar 15, 2010 | Updated: 1:18 p.m. ET Mar 15, 2010

One job of presidents is to educate Americans about crucial national problems. On health care, Barack Obama has failed. Almost everything you think you know about health care is probably wrong or, at least, half wrong. Great simplicities and distortions have been peddled in the name of achieving "universal health coverage." The miseducation has worsened as the debate approaches its climax.

There's a parallel here: housing. Most Americans favor homeownership, but uncritical pro-homeownership policies (lax lending standards, puny down payments, hefty housing subsidies) helped cause the financial crisis. The same thing is happening with health care. The appeal of universal insurance—who, by the way, wants to be uninsured?—justifies half-truths and dubious policies. That the process is repeating itself suggests that our political leaders don't learn even from proximate calamities.

How often, for example, have you heard the emergency-room argument? The uninsured, it's said, use emergency rooms for primary care. That's expensive and ineffective. Once they're insured, they'll have regular doctors. Care will improve; costs will decline. Everyone wins. Great argument. Unfortunately, it's untrue.

A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the insured accounted for 83 percent of emergency-room visits, reflecting their share of the population. After Massachusetts adopted universal insurance, emergency-room use remained higher than the national average, an Urban Institute study found. More than two-fifths of visits represented non-emergencies. Of those, a majority of adult respondents to a survey said it was "more convenient" to go to the emergency room or they couldn't "get (a doctor's) appointment as soon as needed." If universal coverage makes appointments harder to get, emergency-room use may increase.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/234953

[Hello_Kitty]

1. People, the mandate isn't magic. You've been had.

A cursory review of the research that is out there on uninsured reveals that they are NOT the primary cause of high health care costs and as a corollary cause, they rank far below a lot of other things. I no longer believe the "uninsured add 8% to the average premium" canard. There's simply no reasonable basis for it.

[GinaMaria]

2. Here's the next one to come down the pike

Got a letter from my insurance co. today explaining that even with all their bonuses etc, health insurance is only 4% of our total health care expenditure as a country. It is therefore not their fault that premiums have risen so high. Until the other 96% is addressed, insurance companies are going to have to keep raising premiums. It's not their fault. :puke:

This administration promotes insurance co propaganda

Seriously, even the insured cannot afford an emergency room visit.

[rapturedbyrobots]

3. sad but true

even WITH insurance. a trip to the ER to get 5 stitches cost my friend $600. WTF? next time he got hurt just super glued the wound instead of going to the ER because it was too expensive....WITH insurance.