Policies and Regulations

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Lost in the economic crisis, the lousy horserace numbers for McCain, and the personal attacks of the McCain camp is the ongoing health care crisis in the United States. With our current system, there remain 47 million without care and millions more who are underinsured. Cost issues exist alongside inequalities of care access. And now, with unemployment rising, the issue is becoming more acute.
Paul Krugman: Conservative Republicans still hate Medicare, and would kill it if they could — in fact, they tried to gut it during the Clinton years (thats what the 1995 shutdown of the government was all about). But so far they havent been able to pull that off.

So John McCain wants to destroy the health insurance of nonelderly Americans instead. But but Not good. Obama’s idea is different. Today, he signed on to the Health Care for America Now principles, which do not endorse specific legislation, but are compatible with single payer and other approaches. From a press release:

Today, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) signed the Health Care for America Now statement declaring that he is on the side of quality, affordable health care for all and opposed to leaving Americans on their own with unregulated health insurance.

There’s still plenty of room to argue about the best way to get there, but with a recession looming and people in danger of losing their jobs, this is not an issue that can be ignored any more. Expect it to be brought up in the town hall debate tomorrow – unlike the phoney stuff being brought up by McCain’s campaign and his increasingly shrill VP candidate, who caters only to the shrinking Republican base, this is an issue that all Americans actually care about.

“Health Care for America Now’s goal this year is to get the next President and a majority of Congress committed to the principles of quality, affordable health care for all and opposed to policies that would tax our benefits at work and leave us on our own with the unregulated, bureaucratic private insurance industry,” said Richard Kirsch, National Campaign Manager, Health Care for America Now. “With Senator Obama’s signature, we are taking a major step towards getting the next President and Congress to make comprehensive health care reform a priority in 2009.”

John McCain’s plan is anything but acceptable. Since it’s all about saving money and nothing else, he proposes, according to the WSJ: McCain Plans Federal Health Cuts…Medicare, Medicaid Spending Would Be Reduced to Offset Proposed Tax Credit
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain’s senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Medicare spending for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 is estimated at $457.5 billion.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/6/124346/441/758/621648
Those of us who analyze health policy and trends for a living have struggled to follow John McCain’s health plan through its many seemingly-improvised changes. First he was taxing health benefits through both payroll and income tax. Then he said he only intended to apply income tax, which meant that his plan would create even larger deficits. Now he says there won’t be deficits, because he’s going to make up the cost of those tax credits by slashing Medicare and Medicaid.

When a candidate suddenly, almost whimsically changes the way he proposes to handle $1.3 trillion – which is the amount of money his plan puts in play over the next ten years – it’s time to get nervous.

We already knew the McCain plan was going to cost most Americans money (in at least three different ways.) Now we know it could jeopardize their medical care when they get older, too. The end result of this off-the-cuff planning could change the way Americans receive, or don’t receive, medical care in this country…at least three kinds of health “tax increases” (more accurately described as increased personal cost) under the McCain plan: a “slow bleed” for people who retain coverage as the tax credit falls behind inflation, a $,7000-plus spike for people who lose their coverage immediately, and an increase in out-of-pocket costs (and denials, etc.) for people who still have insurance. What do we get in return? According to that neutral study, three million uninsured would gain coverage – briefly. After five years the number of uncovered would go up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/mccains-erratic-health-st_b_132242.html

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Presidential candidate Ron Paul proposes major changes to U.S. foreign policy. We caught up with him in Iowa.

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Karen Hult and Brian Flanagan participated in the first panel of the Hauenstein Center’s Bush legacy conference in Washington, D.C. The panel explored the Bush administration’s policies and procedures. The panel was moderated by Austin Knuppe, research assistant at the Hauenstein Center.

Brian Flanagan, associate director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University, has published several articles on American presidents.

Dr. Karen Hult, professor of political science at Virginia Tech, researches and writes on organization theory, the U.S. presidency and executive branch bureaucracy, the U.S. judiciary, and research methodologies. She has written four books, including “Governing the White House” and “Empowering the White House.”

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Karen Hult and Brian Flanagan participated in the first panel of the Hauenstein Center’s Bush legacy conference in Washington, D.C. The panel explored the Bush administration’s policies and procedures. The panel was moderated by Austin Knuppe, research assistant at the Hauenstein Center.

Brian Flanagan, associate director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University, has published several articles on American presidents.

Dr. Karen Hult, professor of political science at Virginia Tech, researches and writes on organization theory, the U.S. presidency and executive branch bureaucracy, the U.S. judiciary, and research methodologies. She has written four books, including “Governing the White House” and “Empowering the White House.”

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At a Barney Frank town hall meeting in Dartmouth, MA, a constituent asks, “Why are you supporting this Nazi policy?”

Frank responds: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” He then calls her approach “vile, contemptible nonsense.” He closes by saying: “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table.”

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/07/15/What_Does_Government-Run_Healthcare_Mean

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, suggests that big business support for the Obama administration’s health reform is driven by “naked self-interest.” Referring to Wal-Mart and Pharma, Cannon argues that “the administration is carving up the industry, picking winners and losers.”

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Government-run health systems, such as the one in Canada, are pointed to by those on different sides of the issue as examples of what to do or not to do in health reform.

What lessons do these systems hold for the United States as it attempts to overhaul its health care system? What policies should Congress steer clear of?

Join Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and co-author of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It, and Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and author of Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen’s Guide, for a discussion.

Pipes recounts her firsthand experience with the Canadian healthcare system, and both panelists explore what lies ahead for the United States. – Cato Institute

Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies. Previously, he served as a domestic policy analyst at the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee under Senator Larry E. Craig (R-ID), where he advised the Senate leadership on health, education, labor, welfare, and Second Amendment policy.

In addition, Cannon has worked as a health care policy analyst for Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation in Washington, D.C. Cannon has appeared on CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox News Channel, and NPR. His articles have been featured in USA Today, the New York Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Most recently, Cannon coauthored the book Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.

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Barack Obama, May 16, 2008

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In 2006, Massachusetts passed health care reform that implemented a number of policies that are now being mirrored in the Obama health reform plan. The president has repeatedly claimed that his plan will lower health care costs but not decrease health care quality. This visualization looks at how the Massachusetts plan has panned out in terms of cost and wait times.

Sources:

Wait Times – Merrit Hawkins and Associates 2009 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times: http://www.merritthawkins.com/pdf/mha2009waittimesurvey.pdf

Cost of Insurance Premiums – AHIP Center for Policy and Research Individual Health Insurance 2006-2007: A Comprehensive Survey of Premiums, Availability, and Benefits – http://www.ahipresearch.org/pdfs/Individual_Market_Survey_December_2007.pdf

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