Bucks County Courier Times (PA) By Grace Marie-Turner
March 10, 2019
Conservatives and progressives agree that everyone should
be able to get health insurance and have access to quality health care. But the
divide over how to accomplish that goal is wide and deep.
Progressives believe the government should make decisions
about allocation of the resources in our health sector while conservatives
believe these decisions should be controlled by individuals and families.
The sales pitch for Medicare For All is appealing -
universal coverage, free access to doctors and hospitals, and no insurance
premiums, copayments or deductibles.
But then come the tradeoffs: Washington bureaucrats would
decide what services are covered and how much doctors and hospitals would be
paid.
Everyone would be required to give up the coverage they
have now - including 173 million American who get health insurance at work -
and taxes would be much higher to finance $32 trillion in added government
spending over the next decade. For comparison, federal revenues last year
totaled $3.4 trillion.
"If you look at polling data, it's great until you
tell them taxes would double and they'd have to give up their employer
coverage," Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. noted recently.
The American people don't want such a major upheaval. They
rightly don't trust politicians and their broken promises such as former
President Barack Obama's - "If you like your doctor you can keep your
doctor. If you like your health plan you can keep your plan."
At least this time, they are being up front: They would
outlaw private health insurance entirely.
California senator and Democratic presidential candidate
Kamala Harris supports a government-run single payer system and said of private
health insurance: "Let's eliminate all of that."
What they aren't saying this time is that "free"
access to care comes with a big price tag. In other countries with
government-run health systems, care is rationed, waiting lines are long, and
access to the newest medicines and treatments is restricted.
We believe the right solution is to give people more
choices of more affordable health coverage and have states, rather than the federal
government, target resources to those who need help.
We've seen with the Affordable Care Act how difficult it
is for a centrally controlled system to work. The ACA dictated the rules for
health insurance policies in the individual and small group markets, including
the rich benefits package. Then premiums doubled.
Currently, many people have a choice of buying an
expensive Obamacare plan or going uninsured.
Between 2015 and 2018, 3 million people dropped insurance,
according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. California spent $100 million last
fall trying to boost enrollment in its exchange, yet it saw the number of new
enrollees shrink by nearly 24 percent.
The problem is cost. The costs of premiums and deductibles
can be prohibitive, especially for those who don't get subsidies. One dad
trying to provide coverage for his family faced premiums of $4,000 a month for
an Obamacare policy in Virginia last year.
The solution is to offer people more choices of plans that
meet their needs and that they can afford - which a properly functioning market
could provide.
States have decades of experience in overseeing their
health insurance markets.
One part of the ACA provides an option for State
Innovation Waivers to allow states to reallocate existing resources to take
better care of those with pre-existing conditions, for example.
In the several states that requested ACA innovation
waivers, premiums went down and enrollment went up.
States are helping their health insurance markets to
recover, offering better choices and lower costs to families struggling to
provide for their families, and with better protection for those with
pre-existing conditions.
Devolving control to states and ultimately individuals is
the right solution, not more centralized Washington control.
A leading expert on healthcare policy, Grace-Marie Turner is the
president of the Galen Institute, a public policy institute she founded in
1995. Readers may write her at Galen, P.O. Box 130, Paeonian Springs, VA 20129
No comments:
Post a Comment