Grasping for Straws, Obama Touts Savings From Preventitive Medicine

Charles Krauthammer - Preventive Care Isn't the Magic Bullet for Health Care Costs - washingtonpost.com: "Obama followed suit in his Tuesday New Hampshire town hall, touting prevention as amazingly dual-purpose: 'It saves lives. It also saves money.'

Reform proponents repeat this like a mantra. Because it seems so intuitive, it has become conventional wisdom. But like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong. Overall, preventive care increases medical costs.

This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: 'Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.'"

The President just keeps on trotting out rationalizations for ObamaCare, and they continue to be refuted by the facts. Savings from electronic medical records were going to pay for the whole thing. Nobody bought that. The Example of Britain's out of control NHS EMR program was brought to the fore. Then, his unaccountable national health board was going to drive savings that paid for the program. The CBO shot that down.

Now he claims prevention will pay for it, and he give wildly inaccurate anecdotal examples like his $30,000 diabetic foot amputation example. The CBO has already shot this one down, too. The President is not a dumb fellow. He could be educated on health care economics if he wanted to be. But of course, this whole program has nothing to do with health care economics, it has to do with wresting away control for 17% of our economy.

No Facts Please, We're Leftists!

John H. Cochrane: What to Do About Pre-existing Conditions - WSJ.com: "Health care and insurance are service-oriented, retail businesses. There is only one way to reduce costs in such a business: intense competition for every customer. The idea that the federal government can reduce costs by negotiating harder or telling businesses what to do is a triumph of hope over centuries of experience."

Private, competitive insurance markets are a superior way to solve the pre-existing-conditions problem, and the only hope to lower costs.

In this column the author, a University of Chicago professor (not a mere lecturer) explains how the means to handle the difficult problem of "pre-existing conditions" is already available in the private health insurance marketplace.

Highlights of Coming Attractions In Canadian Health Care

Thousands of surgeries may be cut in Metro Vancouver, leaked paper reveals:
"# Health authority to cut funds for mental health and addiction service providers to save $400,000
# Core patient services face deep cuts in Metro Vancouver, NDP says
# Massive cuts planned for Fraser Health region: NDP
# 2,500 elective surgeries delayed for 2010 Games
# Health jobs cut, your fees and wait times will increase
# Elective surgeries to be cut by 35 per cent during Olympics"

I'll say it again. Despite all of President Obama's protestations, no nationalized health care system has demonstrated any propensity to slow or control the growth of health care spending, except thru draconian service rationing. Hat tip to Pragertopia.

Another Answer To My Friends Who Cite Euro Health Care

Barack Obama healthcare: NHS patients missing out, British expert warns - Telegraph: "“Inevitably in a tax-based government run health service, the increasing costs will be borne by younger working population.

“At a time of rapid health inflation due to innovative technology, this is just unsustainable. The same tensions apply to defined benefit pensions for public sector workers. We are rapidly approaching the point at which the political fudging of pensions and health care will no longer be possible,” he warned."

Read the whole linked article - lots of sobering facts about the British NHS.

Just as my earlier post on France indicated, the nationalized health care systems of Europe that President Obama wants to emulate are, in fact, careening out of control. They have not succeeded in controlling the growth of health care spending, despite sometimes draconian rationing.

Cap-and-Trade's Unlikely Critics: Its Creators - WSJ.com

Cap-and-Trade's Unlikely Critics: Its Creators - WSJ.com: "Mr. Crocker and other pioneers of the concept are doubtful about its chances of success. They aren't abandoning efforts to curb emissions. But they are tiptoeing away from an idea they devised decades ago, doubting it can work on the grand scale now envisioned...
'I'm skeptical that cap-and-trade is the most effective way to go about regulating carbon,' says Mr. Crocker, 73 years old, a retired economist in Centennial, Wyo."

Add crap and trade to the list of discredited and dated ideas that the triumphal leftists are trying to foist upon the US.

Did Porkulus Turn The Economy Around?

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- What's The Stimulus Have To Do With It?: "Claims that higher taxes and a total of $2 trillion in stimulus, TARP and bailout spending this year have turned the economy around are unconvincing. Indeed, they're farcical.

As economist Casey Mulligan noted on the New York Times blog after dissecting second-quarter GDP data, total stimulus at the state and federal levels amounted to about $12 per person. That's stimulus?"

Unprecedented, massive monetary stimulus by the Fed is what is bringing an end to the recession. And the wealth that has been restored in the stock market is going to encourage consumers, who feel wealthier to spend more generously going forward.

But regardless of what brought about this turnaround, since we are now on the mend, why don't we cancel the rest of the $700B+ of Porkulus that hasn't been spent and put a massive dent in the growing deficit/debt picture?

France Fights Universal Care's High Cost - WSJ.com

France Fights Universal Care's High Cost - WSJ.com: "France claims it long ago achieved much of what today's U.S. health-care overhaul is seeking: It covers everyone, and provides what supporters say is high-quality care. But soaring costs are pushing the system into crisis. The result: As Congress fights over whether America should be more like France, the French government is trying to borrow U.S. tactics.

In recent months, France imposed American-style 'co-pays' on patients to try to throttle back prescription-drug costs and forced state hospitals to crack down on expenses... And service cuts...are prompting complaints from patients, doctors and nurses that care is being rationed."

The French system's fragile solvency shows how tough it is to provide universal coverage while controlling costs, the professed twin goals of President Barack Obama's proposed overhaul.

Click the link above and read this article. One of the most persistent arguments I get from people defending the ObamaCare agenda is, "it works well in Europe, Europeans love their health care." Well, after I point out the Americans overwhelmingly love their health care too, I point out that the Europeans are living on borrowed time. As the article points out, the French system is running persistent deficits and health care costs are climbing steeply. Unfortunately, after decades of French citizens considering health care a God-given right, it has become politically impossible to implement reforms to bring costs back in line.

France has a nice system - lot's of choice - limited central planning. But, it does not have any free market mechanisms to help reduce costs at the margin. There are only two choices for the French going forward: 1) accept free-market reforms like co-pays, health savings accounts, etc, or 2) create an ObamaCare central authority to ration care. The health care free lunch is over.