In response to Matthew’s take on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Massachusett’s-style plan to require that all state residents purchase insurance ("California Not Really Uber Alles" 12/26 ) contributor and friend of THCB Jeff Goldsmith writes: 

"Isn’t it interesting that the projected California budget deficit
and the cost of the health reform program are both about $14 billion.
So to fix both of them would thus requires the state to find a mere $28
billion? That’s the real reason it isn’t going to happen, not provider
lobbying or employer intransigence. No state can really do something
like this by itself without wrecking its economy. It is what we have a
national government for.

It isn’t really that hard conceptually to construct an affordable
benefit. Remember the large majority of the uninsured are young people.
A stripped down package which covered primary care MD services, dental
care, chronic care type drugs like insulin, and catastrophic
hospitalization coverage (w/ some type of negotiated deep discount for
the patient’s part of the hospital bill) would do the trick.

The problem is stopping one’s ears for all the sob stories from the
chiropractors, podiatrists, aromatherapists, etc. who want to force you
to insure for their services. Your suggestion that the real problem is
retaining employer based coverage still dodges the question that
somehow, somewhere, a legislative body still has to define what
coverage is mandated.

Why do you think employers are so resistant (a 7.5% payroll tax
might be part of the explanation)? It is because thirty years of
legislative history suggests our elected representatives, like that
easy woman in the musical Oklahoma, "cain’t say no". Mandated in vitro
fertilization, breast reconstruction after cancer surgery, etc. – all
worthy goals in a resource unlimited world, but death to an affordable
universal benefit.

Oregon’s John Kitzhaber, an emergency physician by training, seems,
so far, to have been the only political leader of either party to have
figured out that making these types of hard choices is the real problem
in health reform- not "play or pay", tax deductions or hard subsidies,
employer or individual mandate, or all the other comparatively trivial
choices. Listen to all the pervarication from the Presidential
candidate poseurs on what actually gets covered. It’s enough to turn
you into a New Zealander."

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Jeff Goldsmith is the president of Health Futures Inc.  From 1982 to 1994, Jeff served as National Advisor for Healthcare
at Ernst & Young. From 1980 to 1990 he was a lecturer at the
Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He currently
serves on the editorial board of Health Affairs. His past pieces for THCB have included "The Perpetual Healthcare Crisis" and "Employers’ Health Cost Growth Continues to Moderate:  Ain’t It Awful?"

My personal end of year letter which details the causes and charities I support is up over on my almost defunct personal blog. Please take a look if you’re feeling in the mood!

And in your Friday irrelevancy….

I love those “Top 10 most emailed or read” lists and I’m hoping that Typepad will one day let me get one on THCB. Until today the most ever I saw was 3 of the top 10 in the LA Times being on Lindsay Lohan when she crashed her car into a rehab facility (or something like that).

But what beats Lindsey?  It’s When Animals Attack

This is a screenshot from the most read articles on the SF Chronicle’s web site. Tatiana the man-eating tiger is the top two and four of the top seven!

Bhutto’s death can only make 5^th place…

Every year at this time, millions of Americans turn their attention to a much-beloved story about health
care reform. I refer, of course, to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

While this is not the traditional plot summary, it aptly describes a story rooted in the plight of a crippled young boy whose father cannot afford the care his son desperately needs. The prospect of Tiny Tim’s eminently preventable death finally breaks through Ebenezer Scrooge’s bitterness, causing the old miser to abandon his hard-hearted ways. Alas, we Americans still seem inclined to treat the demand for universal health coverage like the Scrooge of old. His dismissive cry, “Are there no poorhouses?” is echoed by our smug assertions that those in dire medical need can “just go to an emergency room.”

Would-be reformers have responded with statistics about 18,000 preventable deaths each year and stories about the real-life Tiny Tims in our midst — to no avail. A new report from the American Cancer Society concluding that those without health insurance are 1.6 times more likely to die of their disease than those with private insurance came just a few days before Christmas and a few days after President Bush’s latest veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which would help millions of children living in near-poverty.

So this holiday season, rather than tugging on heartstrings, I’d like to take the opposite approach. Forget about the waifs: let’s talk about your wallet. The Cratchit families of this country are costing you and me money.

Continue reading…