If this doesn’t convince you that government-funded medical care is broke… I don’t know what will:

In July 2010, at National Review Online’s Critical Condition blog, I wrote about a University of Virginia study, published in Annals of Surgery, finding that surgical patients on Medicaid endured a 97 percent higher likelihood of in-hospital death than patients with private insurance, and a 13 percent greater chance of death than those with no insurance at all…

In many states, Medicaid pays doctors a fraction of what private insurers pay. In 2008, in California, a doctor made 38 cents on a Medicaid patient for every dollar he made seeing a privately insured one. In New Jersey, a doctor made 33 cents. In New York, 29. And states continue to decrease Medicaid physician fees, because it’s the only lever they have.

As a result, most doctors choose not to see Medicaid patients, because they can’t keep their practices alive if they do. That, in turn, makes it hard for Medicaid patients to get doctor’s appointments for annual checkups, routine care, and even urgent medical problems. A 2011 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that many doctors refuse to see Medicaid children complaining of seizures, uncontrolled asthma, and even broken arms.

A study by two MIT economists found that three-quarters of physicians receive lower fees for treating Medicaid patients than they do for the uninsured, because the uninsured pay in cash for routine health expenses. Cash is hassle-free.

 

How are doctors supposed to stay in business on $.29 on the dollar???  I’d love one of my liberal friends to explain that one to me.  Do they have any clue how expensive medical school is?  Does it even register to my liberal friends that patients WITHOUT any insturance at all had a lower chance of death in a hospital than patients WITH medicare?  Obamacare puts MORE people on medicare and keeps it drastically underfunded.  Is this what we want as national health policy?

For those of you cheering Obamacare, here’s this story at the daily caller:

The nonpartisan Fraser Institute reported that 46,159 Canadians sought medical treatment outside of Canada in 2011, as wait times increased 104 percent — more than double — compared with statistics from 1993.

Specialist physicians surveyed across 12 specialties and 10 provinces reported an average total wait time of 19 weeks between the time a general practitioner refers a patient and the time a specialist provides elective treatment — the longest they have ever recorded.

In 2011, Canadians enrolled in the nation’s government-dominated health service waited long periods of time for an estimated 941,321 procedures. As many as 2.8 percent of Canadians were waiting for treatment at any given time, according to the Institute.

“In some cases, these patients needed to leave Canada due to a lack of available resources or a lack of appropriate procedure/technology,” according to the Institute. “In others, their departure will have been driven by a desire to return more quickly to their lives, to seek out superior quality care, or perhaps to save their own lives or avoid the risk of disability.”

This seemed like an interesting approach to medicare re-imbursements:

Here is my question: Wouldn’t some of these issues go away if Medicare started reimbursing patients rather than doctors? Medicare could set a reimbursement schedule for each procedure, prescription drug, etc. Doctors could charge whatever they want and patients could choose which doctors to see based on their fees or their preferences (like we do for other goods). The patient would pay the difference between the doctor’s fee and the Medicare reimbursement if need be. I would think many doctors would decide to charge exactly or just a little above what Medicare reimburses, to attract more patients. Other doctors may decide to charge more and would attract patients willing to pay more for the service. Doctors would probably have to offer patients a choice between different drugs depending on their price, e.g. generic versus non-generic.

That’s how some countries do it — France, for instance.

I’m not suggesting I think this is the best approach… nor do I think we necessarily want to emulating France, but anything that puts more of an impetus for health care consumers to be more engaged with health care’s actual costs seem to be at least an improvement with our current system – where most costs are handled entirely between doctors and third parties.  As Rugy points out, this may have the effect of reducing demand for health care (as people may be more hesitant to front out-of-pocket costs and then wait for re-imbursement), but doesn’t the current system actually encourage over-consumption?!

via Can We Get ‘Price Controls’ Out of Medicare? – By Veronique de Rugy – The Corner – National Review Online.

Really bad news starting to come out re: Obamacare.  Find out more here:

Obamacare: Condition Serious, Prognosis Grim – Deroy Murdock

Can we really believe Obama’s pledge that we will all be able to “keep” our health care plans when the only thing standing between our us and our plans is an Obamacare exemption from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius?

Perhaps put differently: Is Obamacare really that great if private employers need exemptions from it in order to continue offering it to their employees?

It looks like Obamacare is turning out to be more and more of a cluster.

I’m not the only person arguing that Obamacare is unconstitutional.  Richard Epstein,  also makes the case in the Wall Street Journal:

..In Massachusetts v. EPA—the notorious 2007 decision allowing the EPA to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant—the Supreme Court recognized that the state had standing to sue to protect its own coastline from the supposed ravages of excess CO2. The Supreme Court should likewise also recognize a state’s standing to sue when the federal government seeks to command its resources to serve federal objectives.  In New York v. United States (1992), the Court prevented the U.S. from forcing states to take title to nuclear waste. It can surely prevent the federal government from mandating massive expenditures of scarce state resources.

Now, do I think it is likely for the law to be declared unconstitutional if a case got to court?  Probably not… but it certainly is not an unreasonable conclusion to draw based on current law.

via ObamaCare’s Phony Medicaid ‘Deal’ – WSJ.com.

James Taranto points out the troubling reality about ObamaCare… and why its going to destroy the insurance industry.  First, a lesson from Massachusetts:

Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts' 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.

In 2009 alone, 936 people signed up for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts for three months or less and ran up claims of more than $1,000 per month while in the plan. Their medical spending while insured was more than four times the average for consumers who buy coverage on their own and retain it in a normal fashion, according to data the state's largest private insurer provided the Globe.

The typical monthly premium for these short-term members was $400, but their average claims exceeded $2,200 per month. The previous year, the company's data show it had even more high-spending, short-term members. Over those two years, the figures suggest the price tag ran into the millions.

Other insurers could not produce such detailed information for short-term customers but said they have witnessed a similar pattern. And, they said, the phenomenon is likely to be repeated on a grander scale when the new national health care law begins requiring most people to have insurance in 2014, unless federal regulators craft regulations to avoid the pitfall.

The dirty little secret about ObamaCare is that Democrats are coercing insurance industries into compliance with the Democrat’s social agenda.  Insurance companies are becoming political tools Politicians can use to sway voters and maintain their power.  The sad reality is that this agenda is ultimately one that creates what I would call a “moral hazard” — and by this I mean a situation that encourages individuals to act irresponsibly… by incentivizing them to dump the costs of their own personal care onto the backs of their fellow citizens AFTER they are injured… instead of bearing the costs of their risk along with their fellow citizens.

How many people do you think will pay monthly insurance premiums insurance if they can enroll in any plan they want at the moment they need medical bills paid?  I wouldn’t.  To call this “insurance” is to abuse the english language.

The sad reality of ObamaCare is that fewer people will have health insurance tomorrow than do today… and everyone’s premiums will continue to go up to cover the costs imposed by those who game the system.

It’s almost as if Obama’s intent all along was to run the insurance companies out of business.

via Strange New Respect – WSJ.com.