Obamacare

Background

Updated 04/16/2010

You can't pick up a paper or watch a TV news program without hearing the talking heads discuss the Obamacare Bill. The problem is that few people really know what's in it, (but that hasn't stopped our elected officials from voting on the Budget or Cap and Trade). There is also a lot of conflicting information flowing from the supporters. Obama says it won't add to our tax burden but his own Office of Management and Budget disagree as do most economists. When his surrogates repeat this drivell they get laughed at. And let's not forget Obama is comparing 12 months of taxes to 6-8 months of benefits - how stupid does he think we are?

Supporters say it won't affect Seniors' care but even the NY Times disagree on this. Supporters also say that it won't cover Illegal Immigrants. But when Republicans attempted to insert language to clarify this it was voted down by the Democrats. Supporters also point to other Socialized programs like Canada and the UK, but day after day we are hearing about problems there. Supporters also say that there won't be any Rationing but in the UK the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) ruled against two drugs that prolong the life of those with certain forms of Breast and Stomach Cancer. In 2007 they restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness. One drug Macugen was blocked outright. The other Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, restricting it to about one in five sufferers. Even then the drug was only approved for use in one eye, meaning those lucky enough to get it would still go blind in the other eye. I could go on here but better for you to check out the July 7, 2009 article in the WSJ called "Of NICE and Men. It's obvious that we just can't trust the current Administration or even our elected officials who think that they know more than we do.

In order to analyze this I will discuss two areas in this post, Quality and Wasted Costs.

Quality

We don't hear many complaints about quality and when we do the complainers are usually quoting from a study done by The World Health Organization. You have probably heard Michael Moore state that the US ranks 37th in the World. (Nice try Mike).

There are more than a few problems with this study. (See Cato website "Who's Fooling Who?", 2/28/09.

1. 
   
   There are really two rankings from WHO. The first is the "Overall Attainment" and then there is OP which uses the same data but adjusts it to reflect a Countries performance relative to how well it "Theoretically) could have performed. Using the OA data the US is ranked 15th. In neither case is the US ranked 37th.


2. 
   
   There are 5 key factors that are weighted (by WHOM?) to achieve the rankings. They are: .Health Level 25% - Health Distribution 25% - Financial Fairness - 25%, Responsiveness - 12.5% and Responsiveness Distribution - 12.5%. As you can see, many of these factors are unrelated to actual Healthcare Performance.


3. 
   
   The rankings are designed in a manner that favors greater government participation.


4. 
   
   They are paternalistic. Although it is difficult to get information on all releavant factors, and earlier report asserted that "Problems such as tobacco consumption, diet and unsafe sexual activity must be included in an assessment of healthcare performance.


5. 
   
   I spent many hours googleing this information and can't find any updated of real health data since 2002.

Quality Conclusion

The U.S. should not be relying on WHO for the assessment of our Health Care System. That would be like relying on the UN for our National Security. We need to develop our own measures and monitor our System on its Continuous Improvement.

Wasted Costs

In researching this issue I have found that PricewaterhouseCoopers has been a leader in conducting frequent and clear analysis. There won't be time to go over all of their material here but if you are interested Google "The Price of Excess Healthcare Spending".

In a study released in April of 2008, PwC calculated that of the $2.2 Trillion spent on Healthcare in the US, more than one half or $1.2 Trillion was wasteful spending. Of this $210 Billion is assigned to "Defensive Medicine", which is the result of High Medical Malpractice Insurance Rates, which of course is the result of "Excessive Tort Awards".

As you know, Obama has been very blunt in saying that he will not go after Tort Reform. How could he? The Trial Lawyers are one of the largest contributors to the Democratic Party. Here in Illinois they are the number 2 Contributor to Sen. Durbin.

Obamacare can't be fixed. There are too many hidden costs, exaggerated benefits, deceptive cost benefit analysis and so on. This bill needs to be overturned and we need to start with a clean sheet of paper and some honest Legislators with Spines.