Carolynn’s Blog

Interesting Article from the Kansas Star.

I DO NOT favor expanding Medicare (I favor shrinking it)…but I do agree with this statement:

Insurance, as usually defined, is the creation of a pool of people to spread out risk…Health insurance is no longer insurance against risk but rather has come to include pre-paid health care with coverage for routine maintenance and preventive health care….These costs are regular and predictable…not the kind of costs one should buy insurance for.

I believe high deductibles for health insurance are a good thing.

But then he goes on to say this:

And it will be difficult to eliminate our American employer based insurance system with a different system because the insurance companies know the alternative: a single payer system.

The alternative to an employer based system IS NOT a single payer system.  Just ask the Swiss.  We can separate health insurance from employment.

It occurs to me that opening up Medicare to the young and healthy will perhaps prolong the day of reckoning…the day when Medicare runs out of money.

By taking a cash infusion directly from premiums paid by businesses and younger/healthier individuals Medicare’s future is going to look a bit brighter, at least in the short run.

Of course, hospitals and doctors rely on payments from private insurers and individuals to make up for the amount not paid by Medicare/Medicaid…where they get that if health care is nationalized I have no idea.

Pundits on the right discount how difficult it is to get insurance if you have any sort of pre-existing condition.  They also discount how difficult it can be to get your insurance company to pay for care if you get sick — especially if you aren’t part of a big employer plan where you don’t have a human resource department to go to bat for you while you’re undergoing chemo. (more…)

Nice summary from Arnold Kling.  Key take away it won’t cut cost… It will just be more of Medicare…big, and less innovative than private care.

What Thoma wants me to believe is that as soon as we get rid of that pesky private health insurance, Medicare will become expert at weeding out cost-ineffective procedures and paying for cost-effective care. That would be wonderful, but I’m from Missouri. Show me that Medicare can do that for its existing customer base before you go out and shut down private health care. I am reluctant to start toting up lots of savings that could occur in theory when we do not see those savings in practice.