A Roundup of Health Care Reform Stories

The headline over John Calfee's opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on the 26th (I know, I'm late) should remind everyone what's at risk if America's health care comes under Congressional control: The Dangers of Fannie Mae Health Care. Gives "sub prime" a whole new meaning. Please read the whole thing.

The Calfee piece focuses on the issue of a government plan (public option) to comepte with private health insurersn, something I take on in my column in The News Tribune this morning.

But the so-called “public option” will not be an option for long. If established, the public plan would soon be the only game in town. The government’s advantages in any faux market competition are clear: Governments dictate the prices they pay providers and regulate their competitors.

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As the government plan crowds out private competitors, it ineluctably leads to single payer. That’s why its backers are pushing so hard for the public option. It’s their only politically viable path to government-run health care.

Today's WSJ also has an excellent George Newman article, Parsing the Health Reform Arguments. This one is a must-read. He neatly dissects proponents' claims regarding the rising cost of health care, the costs of serving the uninsured, the effect of reform on international competition, and more. There's a lot of good information packed into this short, highly readable op-ed.

And in Olympia Business Watch, Don Brunell writes about medical malpractice, an important element in reform (one the president has ruled out), and links to this incisive Richard Epstein commentary.

FInally, yesterday's Seattle Times includes this op-ed from Don Conant and Judy Coovert, two business leaders and AWB board members. They note that after the Clinton reform effort failed, a number of states attempted their own reform measures, without success and at considerable cost.

Government-managed state reform plans like those tried in Washington, Oregon, Tennessee, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Maine have provided a clear indication of reforms that do not work. These programs used price controls, penalties for employer nonparticipation, mandates, and business and sin taxes among other things in an effort to centralize control of health-care costs and availability.

Conant and Coovert suggest a beter model.

The business community should support reforms that improve the quality, availability and affordability of health care by promoting competition, transparency and consumer participation.

As they mention Massachusetts, the news from the Boston Globe shows the continued problems facing the prematurely-celebrated Connector model, which still figures prominentaly in discussions in D.C.

In Massachusetts, the numbers never added up, as everyone involved in crafting the new law understood. But for a variety of reasons, ranging from Romney’s presidential aspirations to Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s longstanding commitment to healthcare reform, everyone smiled for the cameras and hoped for the best out of this noble experiment.

Today, the current governor, Deval Patrick, a Democrat, is skeptical about the end product. Asked during a televised town hall meeting in March if he believes national healthcare legislation should be patterned after the Massachusetts plan, he said, “I don’t know. I had real misgivings about it as a candidate. . . . I’m proud of it, but I don’t know if it’s a model for the nation.’’

I think we know: It's not a model. There's much more to getting this right than smiling for the cameras and crossing Congressional finers. As Conant and Coovert wrote, more government control is not the answer.