Will Heath Care Reform Actually Save Us Any Money?
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Congress, Health CareDavid Brooks identifies a key problem with the health care reform legislation milling around Congress: it may not save us much money:
If you read the C.B.O. testimony and talk to enough experts, you come away with a stark conclusion: There are deep structural forces, both in Medicare and the private insurance market, that have driven the explosion in health costs. It is nearly impossible to put together a majority coalition for a bill that challenges those essential structures. Therefore, the leading proposals on Capitol Hill do not directly address the structural problems. They are a collection of worthy but speculative ideas designed to possibly mitigate their effects.
The likely outcome of this year’s health care push is that we will get a medium-size bill that expands coverage to some groups but does relatively little to control costs. In normal conditions, that would be a legislative achievement.
There’s worse things than a medium-size bill that mitigates some negative aspects of our health care structure – except, as Brooks reminds us, President Obama is counting on significant savings in health care to pay for the trillions he’s pumping into stimulus projects.
The theory is this: we’ll be able to pay off the debts we’re generating today if we can reduce our health care costs in the future. But what if we don’t reduce those costs? What if we have to pay back our debts AND still handle increasingly high health-related costs? That’s not going to be good for our economy. But it’s the bargain we’re trying to make. And it’s something we need to keep in mind as we debate health care reform.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 and is filed under Congress, Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Anyone who says that we can expand coverage to 45 or 50 million people who don’t have it now (about 20% more people) and pay for it by reducing costs across the board is a fool or a liar. On top of that, it is certainly true that the major forces driving increased costs are fundamental: more people living longer; more people expecting and demanding a better quality of life even with serious illnesses or injuries; rapid developments in medical practice and technology that increase the numbers of people diagnosed with illness and open up expanded treatment possibilities.
To be sure, there are ways to cut here and there but not so you can identify $100 billion a year and more.
So expanded access will have to be gradual and accompanied by huge investments in expanding the numbers of health care practitioners and facilities or there will be rationing that Americans won’t stand for (beginning with Americans who have seats in Congress).
No magic,
May 15th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
No kidding, the system isn’t going to change or cost less until it’s complete deconstructed.
May 16th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Will Health Care Reform Actually Save Us Any Money…
Wonders Alan Stewart Carl, a moderate blogger, about proposed legislation: “David Brooks identifies a key problem with the health care reform legislation milling around Congress: it may not save us much money….ThereÂ’s worse things than a medium-siz…