The Vanishing Case for ObamaCare
Remember all the reasons advanced for the Affordable Care Act? It was going to control private sector health care costs. It was going to control the government’s health care costs. It was going to be funded by efficiencies found in Medicare.
Each of these arguments has fallen, one by one. Then there was this argument:
Expanding insurance coverage would reduce absenteeism, disability and mortality, thereby encouraging and enabling work.
This reasoning is flawed. The evidence that a broad coverage expansion would improve health is questionable. Some studies have shown that targeted coverage can improve the health of certain groups. But according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured, “evidence is lacking that health insurance improves the health of non-elderly adults.” More recent work by Richard Kronick, a health-policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton, concludes “there is little evidence to suggest that extending insurance coverage to all adults would have a large effect on the number of deaths in the U.S.”
More from Daniel Kessler in the Wall Street Journal.
Having health insurance doesn’t translate to healthy living, for that, there has to more effective incentive structure, one that encourages health behaviors and penalizes unhealthy ones. However, the wellness programs seem to produce mixed results.
The old saying goes that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. People have to want change for themselves. Incentivizing healthy beavhiors like Sadat said is a good way but in the end, it must come from a desire within.
Hmmm. So tell me again why I should be for Obama Care?
I know this is OT, but I wanted to ask John G. a question and I could not find his email address. There has been a lot of talk in the past week about a regulation issued by HHS with illustrations of the cost of the cheapest family plan being $20,000 in 2016. I suspect that this is a misinterpretation of an illustration that is not necessarily a prediction. Does John have an answer on this one, or does anyone else?
Sorry for the diversion.
I don’t think it’s a hard concept to understand that having health insurance has nothing to do with actually improving health.
I agree with the comments mentioning that incentives work better to improve health and that coverage is not a deemed causation for improved health.
Actually, comprehensive coverage can lead to decreased health, in that the person knows he has little financial downside to illness, and he has no upside, financially, to maintaining his health.
What is needed is a reward mechanism, similar to the health and wellness provisions, which can save up to 50% off the cost of coverage.
I am not sure how that savings can transfer into lower premiums.
Is it anything similar to the plan I worked out with Milliman, which provides an increasingly paid-up benefit of $25,000 in 36 months, and $50,000 in 60 months, reducing premiums 60-80%, by increasing the paid-up dedictible to $25,000-$50,000 (all this for $300 a month).
Don Levit
I am all in favor of wellness and health incentives. I believe that if your money is on the line, you will find a way to keep as much of it as possible – even if that means hitting the track.
Wake up Washington, there is no “case” for obamacare!
the case for health reform is that what’s been going on is not going anywhere good; that we must consciously change what’s going on. The ludicrous notion that ‘free’ markets have been taking us in some useful direction – that making them ‘free-er’ is just the thing in our current circumstances – goes beyond ludicrous, to irresponsible.
Don’t like ACA provisions? Change them. But make your case that what you want to do is genuinely better.
Then it is simple coincidence that every single Western nation that has universal health care, which is all the other Western nations, has better health than America and lives longer than Americans? The recent study ranking American health dead last is meaningless? Statistics showing a sharp divergence between America and Canada since 1970 when Canada got universal health care is not worth noting? Our infant mortality rate used to be exactly what Canada had, now if ours was as low as theirs 15,000 fewer American infants would die each year.
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/us-health-worse-nearly-all-other-industrialized-countries
One can have all sorts of cute theories about how people “might” actually stop taking care of themselves if they had universal health care – but the experiment has been conducted, the data is in, and universal health care costs half as much while giving far superior results. I really cannot see how a sane person could know anything about it and oppose universal health care.