So Amy Ridenour actually almost did what I asked and went and answered the questions for the free-marketeers I posed in Spot-on. My email has been broken all day and I’m grumpy, so I thought I’d cheer myself up by replying to her replies. This is mostly gratuitous dancing in the end zone on my part. So those of you who believe in the sanctity of erudite debate may want to skip it. The rest of you can join me in the gutter….
My questions from the Spot-on piece (originally titled “How to talk to a free marketeer”) are in red. Her replies in italics. My replies to her in regular text
“Why are you so happy to have a health care system that kills so many more people who have heart attacks, and amputates the feet of so many more diabetics?”
I don’t accept either of the two premises of the question.
Why not? The data—which I referenced in the Spot-on piece—comes from the Annals of Internal Medicine quoting the OECD. That shows that people suffering heart attacks are much more likely to die here than in Iceland, Denmark and Switzerland, and diabetics are much more likely to have their feet amputated than in Canada, Australia and a few other places. Is Amy suggesting that the statisticians in those countries and here are all lying in a massive fraud perpetrated by the Health Care Quality Indicator (HCQI) Project of the OECD? Funny, because that’s the same data source which produces those breast cancer survival rates that so many on the right wax all lyrical about. And if the data is right, why doesn’t America have a case to answer? We’ve heard enough about cancer care from the right!
And BTW the question has two halves but only one premise! To be clear—it’s not logically consistent to say we’re the best at treating disease by only looking at one or two diseases!
“Ask the free marketeers to explain why they feel comfortable with a financing system that causes at least 25% of all the nation’s bankruptcies.”
Same answer as above.
The same answer as a non-answer? Pretty curious. Perhaps health care costs don’t actually cause bankruptcies, or at least not at the 50% rate that Himmelstein and Woolhandler claim. But the 25% number comes from the reworking of the 50% number by Dranove & Millenson, which was in part funded by AHIP. So even they acknowledge that it’s a problem? But Amy “doesn’t accept it”. Can’t argue with that logic, I guess. I mean you literally can’t argue with it!
“Why [do free marketeers] espouse even greater cost sharing even though it’s been shown yet again this week that increased payment at the point of care reduces people’s likelihood of following their doctor’s advice?
One argument for “letting” people control more of their own health care spending is that the people who earned the dollars have the highest moral right to decide how they are spent.
So now it’s about the moral right to spend your money the way you want. I have no problem with that. Unfortunately those like Amy occupying the high moral ground don’t seem to care that the little people who have to choose between spending money on doctor visits and drugs or on food or rent—and yes there are some—are likely to not take their drugs or get needed care. She may feel all moral and good about that, but there are direct consequences. The most obvious being that more expensive things need to be done to them later (like the diabetics getting their feet amputated). Which of course the little people don’t pay for (at least not monetarily), but the rest of us do. But I’m glad she sees the moral rather than the practical effect of cost sharing at the point of care.
Another argument, which Matthew Holt presumably knows already, is the theory that folks who are spending their own money will shop around for the lowest prices, thereby adding incentive for health care providers to keep prices competitively low.
And while we’re at it, which country has the highest prices at the point of care for drugs and office visits? And which one has the highest proportion of consumer spending out of pocket on those drugs and office visits? Could it be that it’s the same one? As in this one. And how does that work in Amy’s theoretical model? Maybe she’ll enlighten us.
“Why do you want to raise taxes in order to transfer money from the poor and sick to people who are already richer and healthier than average?”
I don’t. Nor during my working lifetime have I seen many examples of tax increases afflicting primarily the poor and the sick (though perhaps tobacco tax increases could be considered an exception; those of us who opposed those, however, were considered to be puppets of Big Tobacco). My primary health care concerns are these: I oppose a U.S. adoption of a government-run, so-called “single payer” or “universal” health care system because I believe it would lead to needless misery, pain and death. I also am extremely concerned about Medicare’s poor financial prognosis (which I also believe will lead to an ever-worsening standard of care under Medicare). I do not believe that my position on either of these means I “want to raise taxes in order to transfer money from the poor and sick to people who are already richer and healthier than average.”
Now I’m a dumb guy so I’m having trouble following Amy here. It’s good that having criticized me for using the terms “screwed up” and for being “emotional” she remains so coldly analytical while accusing universal health care of causing “needless misery, pain and death.”
But original question was unconcerned with the desires of evil government single-payer bureaucrats to ration pre-natal visits for the first 10 months of pregnancy and the like. Instead it referenced the desires of some on the right to give everyone their own personal account with all the nation’s health care dollars divided up proportionally in it. I simply pointed out that if we do that, then money that previously would be spent on health care would instead remain in the accounts of those who are healthier and wealthier than average. If we were to continue to care for the sick in such a system then someone would have to pay the equivalent that’s now sitting unused in those accounts to cover it. That someone would either be the sick themselves, or the taxpayer or both. In my humble economics, that’s a transfer away from taxpayers (who are presumably of average wealth and health) and from the sick (who are of less than average wealth and health) to those who are healthier and wealthier. Amy may not believe that this is a good idea, but in that case she should refute the personal account concept and join those of us who believe in a social insurance model as being the only effective way to pay for health care. I somehow doubt that’s where she’s at.
So there you have it. All my questions completely answered to the satisfaction of anyone who doesn’t care about logic, health services research, or reality. The rest of you may be awaiting her man Hoggy’s shot at it coming soon.
And for those of you who really can’t figure out what “rent-a-quote” means, look at this obituary.
