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Tag: 2012 Election

The Lightweight Romney Health Plan

• 34

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI

Mitt Romney has outlined his new health plan. He outlined five key steps in an op-ed in USAToday. Here is a summary:

Step 1: Give states the responsibility, flexibility and resources to care for citizens who are poor, uninsured or chronically ill.

Step 2: Reform the tax code to promote the individual ownership of health insurance.

Step 3: Focus federal regulation of health care on making markets work…For example, individuals who are continuously covered for a specified period of time may not be denied access to insurance because of pre-existing conditions. And individuals should be allowed to purchase insurance across state lines, free from costly state benefit requirements. Finally, individuals and small businesses should be allowed to form purchasing pools to lower insurance costs and improve choice.

Step 4: Reform medical liability. We should cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice litigation.

Step 5: Make health care more like a consumer market and less like a government program. This can be done by strengthening health savings accounts that help consumers save for health expenses and choose cost-effective insurance.

It looks to me like his health care outline is more intended to make conservative Republicans happy then to really propose ways to reform America’s health care system.

There isn’t one new idea here and it all comes straight from the 2010 Republican campaign playbook.Continue reading…

Neither the Republicans Nor the Democrats Want to Face the Provider Cost Problem

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By ROBERT LASZEWSKI

A key piece of Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan is to change Medicare as we know it. It appears his bold Medicare premium support proposal is failing to gain traction–it is dead as part of any deficit reduction deal this year. Worse, his Medicare proposal looks to be giving Democrats lots of political ammunition for the 2012 elections.

What lies at the heart of Ryan’s Medicare difficulties is that he would all but abandon future seniors (those now under age-55) to a health care system whose age-adjusted premium support would increase each year only at a rate equal to the increase in the consumer price index while their health care costs would likely continue to increase far faster.

Simply, Ryan just shifts the future burden of uncontrolled Medicare health care costs from the federal government to the senior. That will solve a big part of our federal deficit problem but hardly help people.

Yes, he offers a defined contribution health care solution with the promise of invigorating the markets and making costs lower. But we have had a form of Medicare premium support and private competition for years (Medicare Advantage) and there isn’t a lot of evidence the market can get the cost control job done on its own. (See: Defined Contribution Health Care—The Conservatives’ Silver Bullet)Continue reading…

Are We Entering an Era of Political Cooperation on Medicare?

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By DAVID E. WILLIAMS

There’s a chance that we’re starting to see a convergence of opinion on Medicare among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. I know the recent bickering makes this seem like an odd contention, but consider the following:

  • In recent decades Republicans have done a great job of tarring Democrats with the “tax and spend” label while being fiscally irresponsible themselves. Republicans criticized Carter era deficits, and then proceeded to run up much more startling deficits under President Reagan. Bill Clinton had us looking at surpluses(!) as far as the eye could see until W came in and sent the red ink soaring –partly through tax cuts but largely by boosting spending. When Republicans continued brandishing the “tax and spend” cudgel, Democrats figured they were suckers to go the Clinton route of fiscal responsibility and get no credit for it
  • We’re now at the point where the size of the national debt actually matters. The only way to bring it under control is to bring deficits down. This is something on which Republicans and Democrats can agree. So now you’ve got both parties committed to the idea of deficit reduction; that just hasn’t been the case before.
  • There are still big differences on how to do it, but approaches –at least on Medicare– are likely to converge once the challenge is faced in a serious way, i.e., with an eye toward solving the problem rather than pandering to one group or another. In the case of Medicare, Republicans are likely to move toward the Democrats’ position over time.Continue reading…

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