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Category Archives: Reform BS

MCCAIN, LEFTY MEMES & ACTUAL EVIDENCE

Last week, I highlighted what has already become the standard meme for ”progressive” policy wonks who wish to bash John McCain’s proposal to decouple health insurance from employment. The basic talking point, as expressed by Jonathan Cohn, goes as follows:
Insurance companies generally won’t offer coverage directly to people with ‘pre-existing conditions,’ since they represent such bad financial risks.
The […]

Posted 08 May 2008 † Catron § Insurance BS § McCain BS ‡ Comments (0)

HEALTH CARE: WHAT AMERICANS REALLY THINK

The establishment media ignored it, presumably because its findings didn’t fit the party line, but a recent Gallup survey showed that a majority of Americans are satisfied with the quality of their health care. In fact, as the following table shows, the percentage of people saying their care is “excellent” or “good” has actually increased from 80% to 83% […]

Posted 27 April 2008 † Catron § Statistical BS ‡ Comments (4)

DEMS HEDGE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

A few months ago, I wrote that the outcome of the SCHIP debate portended the demise of health care “reform” as envisioned by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It appears that this reality has finally dawned on congressional Democrats. Per The Hill:
Congressional Democrats are backing away from healthcare reform promises made by their two presidential […]

Posted 25 April 2008 † Catron § Political BS ‡ Comments (0)

SCHIP: NJ PROVES BUSH WAS RIGHT

During last year’s debate over the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, President Bush was routinely excoriated in the media for saying that many states had diverted SCHIP funds from poor kids to children and adults from families with incomes exceeding $80,000. He was right, of course, as AP reports:
People earning as much as $295,000 are enrolled in a state health care […]

Posted 01 April 2008 † Catron § SCHIP BS § Universal BS ‡ Comments (3)

HACKER’S A QUACK

Yesterday, two friends with finely-tuned BS detectors e-mailed me the link to Jacob Hacker’s recent paean to government-run health care. I’m glad they did, for if ever an article needed debunking this is it. I realized that when I saw that Hacker begins the piece with a red herring:
‘Socialized medicine’ is the bogeyman that just won’t die … The epithet has been hurled […]

Posted 27 March 2008 † Catron § Government BS ‡ Comments (1)

CENTRAL PLANNING & THE PCP SHORTAGE

The other day, I wrote a post whose thrust was that central planning never works as well as the market (in health care or any other industry) because no group of experts can possibly possess all the information conveyed in a market-determined price.
Kevin Pho has written an excellent op-ed that illustrates the folly of central planning. Dr. Pho […]

Posted 14 March 2008 † Catron § Physician BS ‡ Comments (0)

THROTTLING HEALTH REFORM IN THE CRADLE

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 […]

Posted 19 February 2008 † Catron § Bureaucratic BS § Government BS ‡ Comments (6)

GOLDSMITH ON MANDATES

Respected health care analyst Jeff Goldsmith has a great post over at The Health Care Blog, in which he makes the following point about mandated universal coverage:
To simply assume that extending coverage to the 47 million uninsured somehow assures access and, therefore, better health, requires multiple leaps of faith. There are many physical, cultural and […]

Posted 05 February 2008 † Catron § Universal BS ‡ Comments (0)

ARNOLDCARE TERMINATED

A variety of “progressive” health care analysts are still deluding themselves about the future of “universal” health care. Ezra Klein, as I wrote last week, is as clueless as ever on this point, and Maggie Mahar’s most recent post makes it clear that she is still out in fantasyland:
Perhaps we are entering a new era, where we […]

Posted 30 January 2008 † Catron § Political BS § Universal BS ‡ Comments (24)

THE BILL COMES DUE IN MASSACHUSETTS

Cheap, government-subsidized health insurance is popular. Who woulda thunk it? Apparently not the geniuses who govern the state of Massachusetts. The Boston Globe reports the following:
Spending on the state’s landmark health insurance initiative would rise by more than $400 million next year … The biggest driver of the cost increase is projected growth in the number […]

Posted 25 January 2008 † Catron § Universal BS ‡ Comments (0)