Healthcare
I’ve seen a few blogospheric comments touting the reform of the Veteran’s Administration hospital system as an example of how strong government involvement in healthcare, maybe as strong as single payer, works well. The example doesn’t work for a very simple reason, illustrated below. An article from the July 17 issue of Business Week does…
It’s been a few months since I’ve written about it… Yet it’s back in the news… And it’s important, with impact on a major policy debate… So humor me, and pretend that it’s an exciting topic… With this introduction… Loyal Anchor Rising readers will know… That it can only be… [Dramatic pause]… [Unorthodoxly long dramatic…
Kari Chisholm of “Stand Tall for America”, a web-based effort founded to promote Oregon Senator Ron Wyden’s universal healthcare plan, answers a few questions about the Wyden plan put forth by me in the comments section of the Virginia Progressive blog. (The Wyden Plan is a federal proposal different from the Rhode Island small business…
In today’s Projo, Felice J. Freyer describes a new small business/individual health insurance blueprint unveiled yesterday by the Rhode Island Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner…Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island and UnitedHealthcare of New England are required, starting in May, to offer a “wellness health benefit plan” to individuals and businesses with…
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has announced a universal health coverage plan that he intends to introduce in Congress next year. Here’s how the Los Angeles Times describes it…Wyden’s plan would require employers to continue contributing toward the cost of health coverage, but it would get them out the business of directly providing insurance and…
I remember during the recent RI Senate race that Senator-elect Whitehouse made much of Healthcare, and, in particular, the “broken” Medicare Part “D” program (prescription drugs). In fact, it was number one on his Health Care reform To-Do list. While he was holding “the hands of seniors who are desperately afraid that they’ll wake up…
Commenter “Andy” (no relation, as far as I know) tries to provide a signature example of how emergency room overuse contributes to rising healthcare costs…If an uninsured person has no primary care provider, they are less likely to seek help if they have (to take a silly example) a chronic stomach ache. Let’s say, for…
Megan McArdle of Asymmetrical Information challenges emerging conventional wisdom that using emergency rooms for routine medical care is a significant contributor to rising healthcare costs (h/t Instapundit)…It doesn’t seem to me that emergency room care for routine ailments is actually more expensive to provide than clinical care; it’s just that hospitals price it to cover…
There’s a good debate about healthcare going on in the comments section on last night’s gubernatorial debate that’s worth promoting into its own post…
To understand why universal coverage won’t work for a certain segment of healthcare delivery, consider a fictional extension to your auto insurance policy. You are given the option of buying “gasoline insurance”. Instead of paying for what you buy when you go to a gas station, you will pay a premium at the beginning of…
