Let the experiment begin.
I am not alone in my expectation that the Health Care (insurance) reform will not improve Health Care (it won’t make bad doctors good ones, for instance) and it won’t improve access since lower prices have that pesky effect of increasing demand–in a field where the barriers to entry for suppliers are significant.
I will say this: Â Welcome to the new “Grand Experiment.” Â If it succeeds, then by all means celebrate (but could we get a good solid definition of success on which we can all agree?) Â But (and this is significant) if it fails, how many will have died as part of the experiment, and will we ever be able to recover?
One final note: Â As researchers we have to seek, and get, informed consent from human subjects before we can experiment on them. Â Did you get the forms?
Right on.
I’m waiting to receive my portion of the “real” bill, for all of the unfunded portions of Medicare/Medicaid, etc. How much is my part of $100 Trillion?
And will the system work right, so that I can get quality cardiac treatment after seeing the bill?
Aside from stating the various theories on why it will fail, please also provide your criteria for what it would take to consider the reform a success? (M fewer people without coverage? lower premiums?) Or, is there no way you would consider the reform a success because it does not align with your principles?
Ah more criteria for success. This one is simple.
If healthcare costs “too much” and the service isn’t as good as it could/should be, then my PERSONAL criteria is this:
At the end of the day, I should pay the same, or less than I was paying before reform. That means adding any new taxes on top of the insurance rates, and co-pays. I also would want to receive the same, or better, care.
That one seems fairly straight-forward. Anything else would be making things “worse” than they were, and “making things worse” is bad policy.
At the macro level the same analysis would apply. Simply put, the total dollars spent per capita on health care should go down. This would mean that all those forecasts that predicted the health industry to be “the fastest growing industry in America” should be proven wrong, because as we all know, this reform is intended to wrestle the run-away costs under control.
Now, one might ask why I focus on costs when as you point out so many have argued that the reason for this reform is to help people actually get healthcare (by getting “insurance” coverage.)
Once again, simple. If the reason people were unable to get coverage was because the costs were too high, then bringing the costs down should fix that problem, as well.