Universal Health Care To Cost Money And Jobs

By Joseph Russell- Talk Radio News Service
U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) discussed the future of employer provided healthcare at the Heritage Foundation.
 
The lessons learned from failed universal care programs are alarming and allowing the United States to become another “laboratory” for mandated health care programs will yield similar results, according to U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). According to Blackburn, who spoke comments yesterday at the Heritage Foundation, these systems yield runaway administrative costs and diminish patient access to quality healthcare due to "serious government mismanagement." 
 
“We need to shift the focus,” Blackburn said. “So its not about punishment, and punishing employers, and punishing individuals, and limiting access. That’s not the way to do health care reform. We need to flip it and focus on the positive.” 

Blackburn said that U.S. health care reform needs to be a priority of the government. However,   putting insurance in the hands of the consumer allows more people to have access to healthcare while keeping costs down, she said. The “pay to play” system for employers to continue to provide benefits to employees under universal health care will cost more than 1.5 million jobs and shift 120 million people from private insurance to public insurance, she said. 

The “pay to play” system Democrats have proposed “allows” employers to buy into insurance programs through a newly proposed National Insurance Exchange. The insurance exchange forces insurance companies to offer the same benefits as their competitors, including the government, but they are paid more if the enroll higher risk patients. 

New Study On Healthcare Reform Shows Economic Advantages

A new White House study shows that the economic advantages of reforming healthcare could be beneficial for the majority of Americans. According to Dr. Christina Romer, the chair of the Council for Economic Advisors, expanding coverage for all Americans would not only help with controlling healthcare costs but it would have an enormous effect on lowering the deficit.

“Doing healthcare reform well, is incredibly important for the economy...this is a realistic goal, albeit a challenging one,” said Romer.

By having reform more Americans will be able to see their physician on a regular basis, Romer said. This would improve life expectancy and keep people working which will presumably have a strong impact on the economy.

The fifty-one page report focuses on slowing the growth rate of costs, primarily due to changing provider incentives, health information technology and providing the incentives for consumers so that they can make better choices. There were no short term effects of healthcare reform discussed.

The report can be found at the White House website.

Can The Eagle Learn From The Little Dragon?

Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News

Taiwan, a free-market, capitalist democracy like the U.S. and Britain, developed a national health plan 14 years ago that now covers 99 percent of the people in the country, citizens or not, and enjoys 70-80 percent approval ratings, according to Michael S. Chen, Ph.D., Vice President and CFO of the Bureau of National Health Insurance, here to share that experience with America.

As journalist T.R. Reid reported on Frontline in “Sick Around the World,” Taiwan was the last industrialized nation to adopt universal health care. Except us. As latecomers, they had plenty of precedent to consider. For several years, the Taiwanese government sent representatives to examine most of the world’s existing systems, then worked to consolidate best practices into a form appropriate to their own culture and economy. Dr. Chen was here to report on their system and results as the Obama administration tackles the myriad problems involved in reforming American healthcare.

“Cost is about 100 U.S. dollars, or about two percent of their income for an average family of four," Chen said. The service is mostly paid for by mandated premiums, with about 10 percent paid for by the individual, 60 percent by the employer, and the remaining 30 percent by the government. They achieve near 100 percent enrollment by sending agents out to enroll people who do not comply. Subsidies are available to ensure affordability. Union workers do not get an employer contribution, but pay 60 percent, with the remaining forty percent again from the government, according to Chen.

Any medically justifiable expense is covered, and patients may go to any doctor they choose, though doctors in high demand may have waiting lists. The system itself does not have any backup at all, he said. When individuals are flagged as having an unusually high rate of utilization, their care is examined, and their eligibility may become limited to “just two or three clinics,” Chen said.

Total spending on the National Health Service is about six percent of GDP, which is less than the budgeted seven-to-eight percent.

Publicly, doctors have complained about compensation. “Privately they like it," Chen says, "because they are guaranteed four to five percent rate increases per year. What other occupation can say that?”

As was the case for Taiwan, America would not have to re-invent the wheel, “There are so many wheels already,” Chen said, referring to the many existing systems and long experience in other industrialized democracies.

When the 20 to 30 percent of Taiwanese who disapprove do so, he said, “It’s usually because they think $100 a month is too much money. I tell them to visit America.”

When It Comes to Health Care, the Lesser Lead and the Greater Follows

At the Hearing on the State’s Role in Keeping Americans Healthy, Jonathan Fielding, M.D.,M.P.H., director of Los Angeles Department of Public Health advocated nutritional education within schools, nutritional standards for school lunches, Measuring body fat as a new vital sign, and support for nutritional assistance programs.
Fielding said he advocates stronger measures to keep tobacco away from minors, treatment prompts keyed to health screening, smoke-free indoor environments, and tighter regulation of tobacco.
William Emmet, Director of the Campaign for Mental Health Reform said that depression is a factor in 40 percent of physical illness. The mentally ill, he said, cost more, suffer more, are more than three times as likely to smoke, and die 25 years younger, on average.
L. Allen Dobson, Jr., M.D., F.A.A.F.P.Chairman said North Carolina Community Care Networks, Inc. funds enrollments at a monthly cost of $2.50 per child, and $5.00 per adult, though it might rise to between $3 and $8 as benefits expanded. He said enrollment increased, health care providers became more willing to treat Medicaid patients, and the state saved $100 Million per year.
Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Massachusetts said that Massachusetts’ 2006 Health Care Reform Bill now covers 94 percent of residents, including 99 percent of children. She described coupons for discounts on fruits and vegetables, an aggressive stop smoking program, rewards for workplace wellness measures, and the nation’s first “pay for performance” program, which provides bonuses to hospitals that meet benchmarks.
Sen. Harkin requested a centralized way of comparing what does and does not work, and said that states were testing and demonstrating the way to universal health care at the national level.

Investing in children is an investment in the future

In a conference call today, the Commonwealth Fund discussed a new report which ranks all 50 states and the District of Colombia on key measures of how each state’s health care systems are working for children. The report, to be released tomorrow, assesses states on 13 measures on their health care, quality care, health care costs, health care equity and the potential to lead long healthy lives.

The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that supports independent issues on health care research, and try to get proper information to policy makers to make policy decisions according to the needs of the people. Unlike adult health care, children’s health care relies heavily on federal and states funding not private insurance. According to the report Michigan has the lowest amount of uninsured children at five percent, whereas Texas has 20 percent of uninsured children. Edward Schor, vice president for child development and preventative care at the Commonwealth Fund, said that if every state had only five percent of children uninsured, there wold be 4.6 million more insured children cutting the amount of uninsured children in half.

The main purpose of the report, according to Karen David, president of the Commonwealth Fund, is to help individual states better their health policies for children. States can learn from each other and should model their own policies after successful states, because investing in children’s health is an investment in the future, said Schor.

There is a wide variation across the states, and the report is intended to bring attention to high performance, not as an ideal of what would be desirable but to show what is feasible and what has been achieved by others, said David. In general the south ranked poorly, and Iowa and Vermont led in overall performance. More information and a state by state ranking can be seen at www.commonwealthfund.org.