Obama's Health Care Reform Speech

I'll just try to comment on his speech briefly.

It is a bit overreaching for Obama to be determined to be the last president to try to reform health care. We have no idea what the needs of America will be in fifty years. We will need constant monitoring, evaluation, and reform in order to adapt to future needs.

Over half of US personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills. Employer-provided health insurance (subsidized by the government) has been and is a bad idea. It is hard for US companies to compete internationally, and good American citizens get screwed if they are laid off or self-employed. Small businesses are over-burdened if forced to provide insurance, and the employees suffer either way. Trying to buy insurance individually strips away negotiating leverage and further hurts people.

America takes less care of its citizens than any other major nation. Not only has the government dropped the ball on taking care of everyone, but it lets insurance companies use techniques like rescission to exploit citizens. Obama is calling out our nation, an arrogant nation that likes to believe it is the best, on its cruelty and heartlessness towards its own members.

Obama correctly points out that we all pay more when the uninsured and underinsured end up in the emergency rooms for trivial problems, or major problems that could have been prevented by cheaper basic care. We pay more money as a country for pathetic health outcomes. What he doesn't go into are the details about that: our high payments for cancer treatments and whatnot to extend people's lives just a little instead of focusing on paying for basic and preventative care that would extend more people's lives by a lot. That would raise more "grandma-killing" nonsense, but it really is a great waste that hurts our whole nation. Is baby-killing better? Or worker-killing? Medicare and Medicaid costs are so bad because we provide expensive treatments to people who are going to die anyway, and we enable people with chronic illnesses like diabetes to not minimize their problems. When we can accept the fact of death for the elderly (the private insurance companies actually do have Death Panels, and they're effective at denying care to anyone), and get people to take the barest responsibility for themselves, costs will drastically drop. We also need to cut down on drugs as a whole culture. Pharmaceutical pill-pushing is costly, damaging, and out of control.

Single-payer systems are great, but not the only good solution. Making individuals buy private insurance is a terrible idea. The insurance companies would love that windfall.

The Republican party is united. That is their great strength. Unfortunately, they unite behind terrible ideas. The Democrats, instead of being blind sheep and puppets, like to think for themselves. This strength allows for creativity and progress. This unfortunately leads to many different ideas, such that even when these ideas are good, they split the votes and lead to conflicts that ultimately allow the Party of No to succeed.

THE PLAN
Finally, the meat and potatoes.
1) Enrollment in the public plan is optional if you have other insurance.
This is good. It will be healthy for private insurers to have to compete. Right now they have virtual monopolies in most of the country. People get to choose what they like (this is not always good because insurance plans can be hard to understand, and people are manipulated by advertisements). It is great to make health insurance mandatory. This will reduce waste due to ER visits, and reduce financial hardships for those who have sudden medical needs but didn't have insurance. Unfortunately, there is a hardship waiver for people who still can't afford the premiums. This is where the feds should just pay the premium, but later Obama says that he won't allow that. Hopefully Medicaid will take up anyone who can't afford the public plan premium.

2) Rescission is illegal for everyone.
This is good. People can have more security.

3) Federally mandated cap on out-of-pocket expenses.
This is interesting. I assume that the cap will depend on a person's income, and not be the same for everyone. This will raise premiums for everyone.

4) Federally mandated coverage for routine check-ups and preventative care.
This is probably very good. He mentions tests for cancer, and that worries me. Some cancer tests are very expensive and/or have high false-positive rates, leading to much dangerous, expensive, and unnecessary treatment. I'm especially thinking of prostate cancer. Overall, though, it will be good to regularly tell more people that they need to lose weight, eat better, stop smoking, etc... I hope this doesn't just give doctors more opportunities to prescribe unnecessary drugs.

5) Public plan for anyone.
This is great, if it is affordable. COBRA is absurdly expensive, especially since it's offered to people who just became unemployed! This will definitely help small businesses and self-employed persons, too. No one can be denied for existing conditions.

6) Here Obama talks about an insurance marketplace. It seems like items 2-4 above would only apply to insurance companies who want to participate in the marketplace. Earlier, it sounded like those rules would apply to everyone, but now it seems like they only apply to private insurers who compete for the customers in the public plan pool. That's good incentive for working people to quit their company plan and join the public plan, but maybe only if company plans lose their tax breaks so the true costs are apparent.

7) No coverage for illegal immigrants.
If you want American services, become an American.

8) No federal money for abortions.
Someone said to me that the public plan can still cover abortions because it will be fully funded by premiums, and not federal money. I am not sure about that. It still sounds like the government would pay 900 billion dollars over a decade for the plan, but expects to get that money back from premiums. Obama didn't say he wouldn't spend federal money on the plan. He only said it wouldn't increase the deficit. It is important for the plan to not spend federal money on abortions because the plan would get shot down.

9) Conscience laws still apply.
These are terrible laws that protect health professionals who refuse to do their jobs.

It is not clear to me what incentive insurance companies have to participate in the exchange. This plan says it will have low premiums, but also provide far more services to a group of people likely to have more health problems. Though there is a lot of waste and inefficiency and advertising in other insurance companies, I still do not see how this plan will work. What is offers is going to be expensive. New customers would only be profitable if they pay in more than they cost, and I am skeptical.

If it really would work, I'll sign up. I would love to have the health plan Obama describes. If I felt a need for additional coverage, I am sure a private insurer will have options available to supplement me.

Obama also proposes experimenting (hooray!) in several areas to see if malpractice reform would be helpful. This is something that I already think would be helpful, for the same reasons that Obama wants to try it, and the experimentation would help prove whether it is or not. I am very happy about that.

So, there are some good ideas there, and I am excited about some of them, but I am also skeptical that it will work out as described. We definitely do need reform. Our current system is terrible. Almost any implementation of this plan would be an improvement over what we have, but I think it is likely that it will not meet expectations, and that failure will be used in the future to oppose more needed reform, and against good politicians.