Good: The Walkback from RomneyCare is Complete
I pointed out a while back that you could have predicted what Mitt Romney's healthcare policy proposals would look like, because they were contained in a book written by two of his economic advisors. While I was enjoying vacation, the Romney campaign came out with their health care policy vision, and, yup, it looks just like what Hubbard, Cogan, and Kessler laid out in the book, and Hubbard was on cable news outlining the plan. It is a strong, free market plan and the right vision to combat the creeping to galloping socialism that candidates on the other side are touting. You can even check out a not-so snazzy PowerPoint presentation here.
posted by Donny Baseball at 3:55 PM
4 Comments:
The cost of health care was not a key election issue 10 or 20 years ago, right? It seems that its cost has increased dramatically only in recent years. I think that for a long time the HMOs were able to keep the cost down. What was the catalyst that accelerated cost increase in recent years? Was there a reduction in capacity?
Malpractice insurance premiums is one factor. State insurance mandates proliferated, squeezing out concepts like "major medical" insurance coverage, and socialist concepts like "guaranteed issue" and "community rating" were born.
I recall that in the mid to late 90s, two things happened that probably started the march of healthcare cost dramatically upward: (1) there was a wave of consolidation in the HMOs industry, and (2) a lot of marginal hospitals went out of business (either bankrupt or closed down by their corporate patent). These two events enabled the HOMs to raise rates and hospitals to raise prices. As a result, cost of healthcare has far exceeded the rate of inflation in the last few years. So I think that for anyone who wants to change healthcare policy, first he has to understand why so many marginal hospitals and HMOs went out of business in the 90s. Was it because they were all squeezed by malpractice insurance and state insurance mandates, or did the malpractice insurance and state mandates come after the wave of HMO consolidation and hospital bankruptcies?
TS-
I have to do some research to see exactly what was going on, but my recollection was that HMOs were consolidating because they were losing money and they thought that size was the answer. I think we have since discovered the the HMO model was flawed. Also, hospitals may have been affected by mandated cuts in Medicare reimburesements. I know that nursing homes and assisted living facilities got their reimbursement rates slashed in the 90s and many of them folded. Hospitals may have been similarly affected.
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