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ObamaCare’s Wishful Thinking

Dr. Deane Waldman, an accomplished doctor, author, and a board member of and adjunct fellow at the Rio Grande Foundation believes that ObamaCare’s supporters suffer from “wishful thinking.” Read his full analysis over at American Thinker.

Harry Reid and the Pharmaceutical Industry BFF’s

It never ceases to amaze me how badly some industry groups are at playing “poker” in terms of working the issues and lobbying Congress. PHRMA is one trade group that seems to ignore long term policy impacts in favor of short-term “victories.”

Tim Carney explains how the drug companies bought into ObamaCare and are Majority Leader Harry Reid’s leading (and seemingly only) supporters.

How About Postal Competition? (might work in health care too)

Remember when President Obama said his health care proposal was going to be like the Post Office?

Well, Tad DeHaven over at Cato’s blog makes a point that the Post Office monopoly is raising rates and considering cutting service at a time when its business is in a tailspin. This is not how things would work in the private sector — a private sector, he adds that is increasingly being allowed to compete in the postal marketplace worldwide.

Interestingly, the issue has direct parallels to health care as Obama states. His plan is all about attempting to reduce competition and further place health care under government control. That will inevitably make the incentives of our health care system look more like the Postal Service with rising costs and “rationed” service, but it will be government bureaucrats in charge of a dying monopoly, not individuals in charge of the rationing.

Health care will be rationed, the question is “who does the rationing?”

The Rio Grande Foundation recently added a new Adjunct Fellow, Dr. Deane Waldman, to its stable of policy analysts. More information on him is available here and here. Waldman recently wrote and published an opinion piece in the Portales News-Tribune on the need for “rationing” of health care — or any resource — and the proper way to do it (hint, individuals have the most information about what they need and want).

Bureaucracy Bites 25 year old

ObamaCare was supposed to force health insurance issuers that provide dependent coverage of children to make that coverage available until that child reaches the age of 26. But it looks like someone at the New Mexico Public Schools Insurance Authority didn’t get the memo. So, according to this recent article from the Albuquerque Journal, a woman has had her 24 year old son dropped from her coverage.

Obviously, this is just one, relatively minor, bureaucratic snafu within a very complex piece of legislation, but one has to ask: if a state insurance agency set up for the sole purpose of insuring its members can’t get it right, how should small businesses and other private-sector employers? The answer, quite simply, is that they won’t. They’ll drop coverage instead.

NM Attorney General King Drops the ball on health care suit

Thousands of petitions (including mine) were submitted to Attorney General Gary King. But, despite the fact that 21 other states have filed suit against the recently-passed health care bill and 63% of Americans favor its repeal, King has not lifted so much as a finger to take action to stop the health care bill from being implemented.

As Sylvia Bokor of the Albuquerque Tea Party writes, the bill “violates individual rights. It forces Americans to buy a product. It violates the First, Fourth and Tenth amendments. It is replete with “mandates” that increase near-total control of American lives. It interferes in the relationship between doctor and patient. It will cause a decrease in medical practitioners, research, innovation and quality of medical service.

The health care bill is among the most impactful pieces of legislation ever passed. It is of highly questionable constitutionality, but King will do nothing to question or challenge it.

The Causes of Blue Cross’s Rate Hike (and solutions to our health care crisis)

I already have laid out my brief thoughts on the recent, substantial rate hikes on New Mexicans in the individual health insurance market. Because of the importance of the health care issue to the state and the nation, I decided to expound a bit more on the problem of rising health insurance costs and health care inflation more generally.

The article appeared today in the Deming Headlight. Check it out. I explain why President Obama’s health care plan is destined to fail.

As an aside, I recently received my health savings account statement. I now have more than $6,500 saved in the account after just four years in possession of the account. How much money have you saved through your insurance policy to put aside for YOUR future health care costs?

Blue Cross Rate Hikes (More Transparency Needed?)

This week’s question at the New Mexico Independent Forum centered around Blue Cross Blue Shield New Mexico and its recent efforts to raise rates on individual policies relatively dramatically (in excess of 20% this year). As a policyholder with Blue Cross, I am impacted directly by this, but unlike government from which we all should demand close to 100% transparency, I don’t think hearings are the best way to decide whether an insurance company can or should raise prices.

The real issue at hand here is the need for federal market-based health care reforms and some at the state level here in New Mexico as well. In a competitive, market-based health care market (like car insurance), there would be no need for an elaborate, inefficient, and costly hearing system. Unfortunately, that is not what we have and ObamaCare is not a step in the right direction.

Former Rep. Heather Wilson Destroys Bingaman on Health Care Bill

I did not always see eye-to-eye with Heather Wilson when she was in Congress. She was never fiscally-conservative enough for my tastes and was one of the worst-scoring Republicans year after year in ratings like NTU Rates Congress.

Nonetheless, I was thrilled to see her come out swinging in the Albuquerque Journal regarding the passage of ObamaCare and New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s strong support for the “reform.”

Wilson writes convincingly of ObamaCare’s lack of any real cost controls:

The biggest problem with health care that Americans want addressed is spiraling cost. Year after year of cost growth at two or three times the rate of inflation makes it difficult for any business to offer insurance. One of the biggest reasons take-home pay hasn’t increased much over the past decade is that health care benefits are absorbing what would otherwise show up as pay raises.

The law passed does virtually nothing to address the escalating cost of health care. In fact, health insurance premiums will continue to rapidly increase under the new law, particularly for younger Americans. The law is based on an assumption that greater government control will put a brake on costs. But experience with both Medicaid and Medicare shows this just doesn’t work.

Consumer-driven care and more choices can help control cost growth. The cost growth for medical procedures where the consumer makes a decision — like elective plastic surgery, dental care, chiropractic care, LASIC, hearing aids and eye glasses — are much closer to the regular rate of inflation.

Although Wilson seems to have no plans to run for office in the near future, it was good to see her jump into the health care policy debate on the side of those who opposed even greater federal intervention in Americans’ health care.

Congressional Candidate Barela Shows Solid Grasp of Health Care Situtation

Jon Barela is running for Congress against Rep. Martin Heinrich, who, since the early days of the health care debate has been a strong supporter of a bigger government role in health care. Of course, Heinrich supported the recently-passed health care bill.

Thankfully, this November, residents of District One will have a stark choice to make when it comes to health care. Barela outlined his concerns about health care in an excellent opinion piece in today’s Albuquerque Journal. Among the many critiques that I and others have made regarding the legislation, I was most interested in Barela’s solutions. After all, it is one thing to stop Obama’s ill-advised expansion of government, but it is another thing to oppose Republican health care boondoggles. He lays his vision out towards the end of the article:

There is a better way to offer high quality, affordable health care in America, and it begins by discussing proposals that could win bipartisan approval, as well as the support of states, small businesses, and American families. Among other things, these include allowing for the sale of health insurance across state lines, encouraging small businesses to pool together to compete for lower insurance rates for their workers, significant tort reform to reduce the waste that is generated by junk lawsuits and defensive medical practices, and providing tax credits to individuals to use in health savings accounts.

I like what Barela says here, but there is one thing he forgot to mention. That is, ultimately America must replace its third-party-payment system when it comes to health care. Relying on employers for health insurance is just silly, but that is the way our system is set up and Obamacare only reinforces that absurd system. Hopefully, Jon Barela and what I imagine will be a significant majority in Congress come November will repeal Obamacare and go about dealing with this and other core issues.