Single-payer advocates promote the fiction that people who disagree with them are “against reform.” In reality, however, the most ferocious defenders of the status quo are those who favor government-run health care. The Florida Times-Union reports on a typical campaign to undermine market-oriented reform:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush led the most ambitious and significant reform to Medicaid in the country. Since he completed his term one year ago, bureaucracy and special interests are strangling it.
Florida’s old Medicaid system was a disaster for the patients and for the state budget. It was, in other words, a typical government health care program. So, Jeb Bush decided to try a market-based alternative:
Bush’s vision for a new Medicaid would have allowed all people on Medicaid to choose from competing private plans … Today, there are over 200,000 people enrolled in 16 private sector plans in Broward County, seven in Duval, and two each in Clay, Nassau, and Baker counties.
These plans are full of innovative features:
Individuals can earn credits for healthy behaviors, such as getting mammograms, pap smears, colorectal screenings and bringing children in for appropriate screenings.
And the incentives are properly aligned:
These at-risk plans have a strong financial incentive to quickly get each new member in for a thorough checkup because they will be on the hook later for avoidable high-cost encounters.
All of this is what health care reform is supposed to be about. So, naturally, the forces of the status quo are mobilizing. An unholy alliance of bureaucrats and special interests are deploying phony studies in an effort to smother the program:
In one “study” they used opinion data from 186 physicians … to claim that physician participation in the reform counties is declining. But their own footnote admits this was an 8 percent response rate and “the survey findings should not be considered generalizable.”
Not surprisingly, actual county figures refute this “study.” But the apparatchiks are determined to ignore objective data. In fact, they are hurrying to throttle the program before a legitimate study from the University of Florida comes out this Spring:
Officials in Florida’s new administration have announced that they will not be recommending expansion of the pilot and have not indicated any plan to meet the statutory requirement to expand statewide by 2011.
All of which demonstrates that the advocates of government-run health care are not really for “reform” at all. What they really want is more government intrusion into our daily lives. And they will do their best to smother any effort, market-based or otherwise, to reduce the reach of the commissars.
Comments 6
More hot air - if you’d bothered to even glance at the report you’d see that it is too soon to see if these pilots are working to save money. That’s why they are pilots. But terms have become less generous in year two.
Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 7:54 am ¶I’m a medicaid provider in broward county. The reform as it stands is not patient friendly. Most of the patients have lost services due to providers leaving the program due to inconsistent, untimely service payments (also not provider friendly). The previous system was fine, just no one was paying attention to what was going on.
Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 9:10 am ¶Marc, once again you miss the point. They are trying to kill the program before a formal report is finished. If the program is a failure, go back to the old system, but we do not know if it is a failure. Harry brings up some legitimate concerns about how the program is operating, but would those constitute a failure or an opportunity for process improvement.
Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 10:39 am ¶Matt, I dont see anywhere in this info a bill being introduced to “kill” the program?? Saber rattling as is often done in politics also often leads to nothing. I dont see anyone killing anything here. That being said, Marc has a point.
Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 11:30 am ¶I don’t think I mentioned anything about a bill, but there is obvious positioning going on. When I said Marc missed the point, I was referring to the positioning.
I believe they will try to squeeze this initiative so the legitimate studies have flawed results. My question is: were these plans an option to Medicaid or a replacement? If they were an option, people will answer with their feet.
Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 12:44 pm ¶my point exactly, positioning and “killing” are not one in the same, positioning is “business as usual” for whatever interests. Agree with option vs replacement analogy. I have great hope and belief that in the end, when a decision is to be made the person (or people) making the decision do not do it based on rumor, conjecture or rhetoric. If I am wrong than we are all doomed anyway because what happens will come down to who speaks loudest.
Posted 19 Feb 2008 at 3:28 pm ¶Post a Comment