Americans who think we need a health care system similar to that of Canada should read this piece by Nadeem Esmail. If you like long wait times coupled with ineffective government mandates, you’ll love the system endured by our neighbors to the north. Here’s the crucial passage:
What is being quickly forgotten in Canada is that […]
Paul Krugman, via Economist’s View, is sounding more and more like Colonel Jack D. Ripper when discussing health care. Whereas Colonel Ripper was fearful that dark forces were undermining his precious bodily fluids, Krugman’s bêtes noire are apparently after Medicare:
The plot against Medicare … the stealth privatization embedded in the Medicare Modernization Act, which Congress […]
Harry Reid has been braying again. This time he’s demagoguing Medicare. According to this AP article, Reid has decided to substitute conspiracy theories for reasoned argument about whether Medicare should negotiate with drug companies:
Senate Republicans aligned with big pharmaceutical and insurance companies are standing in the way of the government negotiating cheaper drug prices for […]
If you are one of those people who believe that giving our masters in Washington full control over our health care delivery system will make things more efficient, I recommend spending a few minutes with The Angry Pharmacist:
Now everyone has to apply for a NPI number. That’s right, a NEW number that we all know […]
Gail Wilensky says she’s “troubled” by my criticism of her recent post on the Health Affairs blog:
David Catron seems to be saying that everything would be fine if we would just let the market work …
This ignores the main thrust of my comments, which involved her seeming inability to imagine a market-based alternative […]
Lots of soi disant Progressives seem to believe that giving Medicare the power to “negotiate” with the pharmaceutical industry is a no-brainer. One of their most frequently deployed talking points is parroted today in the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
When the Department of Veterans Affairs buys prescription drugs for veterans, it negotiates discounts from drug manufacturers … […]
A variety of pro-single-payer blogs gleefully linked to a recent “study” purportedly showing that women are penalized by HSA plans simply because they are female. To quote Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, the study’s author:
High-deductible plans punish women for having breasts and uteruses and having babies.
That tendentious assertion suggests that the good doctor is not as objective […]
One reason health care reform is difficult to get done involves the sanctimonious tone that so many adopt when discussing the issue. A classic example of false piety can be found in one of Bill Clinton’s recent effusions at the KCBS health care symposium:
Our health care system is immoral because it doesn’t provide health care […]
InsureBlog links to a post at Trusted.MD on the entirely unsurprising fact that most employees are satisfied with their employer-based health insurance. The post contains the following rather trite observation:
Employers don’t actually pay for health insurance. They simply redirect a portion of their employees’ wages directly to the insurance carrier. Since employees never get to […]
No matter how well intentioned, government meddling in health care produces unintended consequences for patients. And these consequences are rarely good. For anyone still in denial about that, the Health Affairs blog highlights an article that discusses one of the inevitable effects of Medicare’s “Pay-for-Performance” initiative:
P4P and public reporting could actually worsen care for the […]
