So obvious that no one has grasped it. The solution to our cost-control problem is to stop incurring costs.
See what I mean? So simple no one thinks of it. But it’s true.
Right now, there is a huge debate over health care in this country — access to health care, delivery of health care, ability to pay for health care, who pays for health care, people dying for lack of health care, and so on. We are told that we have to find a way to make sure that all Americans have access at least to basic preventive health care.
But this costs money! People say, Well, when millions of people don’t have health insurance, that costs money, too. But that’s money we’re already spending! If there is a poor family, and that poor family cannot afford to pay for the doctor, and they go to the emergency room, and that costs money that raises the cost of health care for everyone, well that’s water under the bridge. Why spend even more money for that family to have basic health care coverage — or millions of families like that family?
Instead of expanding health care coverage to more Americans, we should be cutting it! We should be reducing the number of Americans who get public monies, not increasing them!
Look, I know I’m not explaining this very well, so let me have Robert J. Samuelson explain it to you. He does a much better job than I can (bolds are mine):
One of the bewildering ironies of the health-care debate is that President Obama claims to be attacking the status quo when he’s actually embracing it. Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That’s the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While denouncing skyrocketing health spending, he would increase it by extending government health insurance to millions more Americans.
Just why this approach is perennially popular is no secret. Health care is viewed as a “right.” Promoting it seems “moral.” Cost controls suggest dreaded “rationing.” So there’s a powerful bias toward expansion.
History is unambiguous. Originally, Medicare covered only those 65 and older. In 1972, Congress added the disabled, now about 15 percent of beneficiaries, notes Diane Rowland of the Kaiser Family Foundation. It also covered dialysis for kidney failure. In 2003, Congress created a drug benefit. Along the way, other services (hospice care, mammograms) were added.
Medicaid — the federal-state program for the poor — is the same story, says Rowland. Initially, it covered mainly people on welfare, as defined by states. Gradually, eligibility broadened. Now, children ages 6 to 18 in households under the poverty line ($22,050 for a family of four) get it. Congress also set higher limits (133 percent of the poverty line) for pregnant women and children under 6. In 1997, Congress created the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to expand coverage further.
Meanwhile, open-ended reimbursement by government and private insurance has ballooned health spending despite repeated pledges to “contain” costs. For example, health payments for individuals rose from less than 1 percent of federal spending in 1965 to 23 percent in 2008.
Obama would perpetuate this system. …
See what I’m trying to get at, here? If we want to put an end to skyrocketing health care costs, we have to stop spending on health care.
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.