Harry, Louise and Barack

One of my favorite columnists and economists, Paul Krugman, has an interesting NY Times op-ed piece about Health Care Reform.

From the NY Times: Harry, Louise and Barack by Paul Krugman

Harry and Louise were the fictional couple who appeared in advertisements run by the insurance industry in 1993, fretting about what would happen if “government bureaucrats” started making health care decisions. The ads helped kill the Clinton health care plan, and have stood, ever since, as a symbol of the ability of powerful special interests to block health care reform.

But on Saturday, excited administration officials called me to say that this time the medical-industrial complex (their term, not mine) is offering to be helpful.

Six major industry players — including America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a descendant of the lobbying group that spawned Harry and Louise — have sent a letter to President Obama sketching out a plan to control health care costs. What’s more, the letter implicitly endorses much of what administration officials have been saying about health economics.

Are there reasons to be suspicious about this gift? You bet — and I’ll get to that in a bit. But first things first: on the face of it, this is tremendously good news.

The signatories of the letter say that they’re developing proposals to help the administration achieve its goal of shaving 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of health care spending. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually huge: achieving that goal would save $2 trillion over the next decade.

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Noam Chomsky on Healthcare

Noam Chomsky is one of my favorite modern american philosophers. He is a political activist, prolific writer and lecturer. He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In the video below, which was taken on April 7, 2009 at the Orpheum Theater in Madison, Wisconsin, he spoke to a full-capacity crowd about why the Health Care Reform in the United States has taken so long.



To know more about Noam Chomsky, click here.

The Questions our Healthcare Debate Ignores

Why does every developed nation except the U.S. have universal healthcare? Why do they pay half as much in medical costs? Why are their infant mortality and longevity statistics superior?

From Salon.com: The Questions our Healthcare Debate Ignores by Joe Conason

As President Obama issued his call for reform of American healthcare, he must have been gratified to hear so many professions of good faith and civility from the political and commercial interests that have always opposed change. The health insurance lobbyists as well as the politicians who serve them all promised that this time would be different.

But amid all the reassuring blather, certain fundamental questions were not asked, as usual, because merely posing them might discomfort those same special interests and political leaders. Why do we spend so much more on healthcare, per capita, than other developed countries? Why do we achieve worse outcomes on several important measures than countries that spend far less? Why do we spend up to twice as much per person as countries that provide universal coverage while leaving as many as 50 million Americans without insurance?

The salience of those questions has grown over the past several decades, ever since President Truman first sought to create a universal health benefit program that resembled systems in Europe. Last month, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued the latest in a long series of reports on our wasteful and cruel practices that ought to awaken a sense of national embarrassment. This highly topical study carried a deceptively bland title: "Healthcare Reform in the United States." Naturally, the mainstream media and punditry ignored its findings (although OECD reports promoting free trade often receive wide coverage).

More here.

Obama is really serious about Health Care Reform

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said that he was serious about health care. It looks like he is really very serious. Just look at his health care budget. I am really impressed.

President Obama is proposing to begin a vast expansion of the U.S. health-care system by creating a $634 billion reserve fund over the next decade, launching an overhaul that most experts project will ultimately cost at least $1 trillion.

The "reserve fund" in the budget proposal being released today is Obama's attempt to demonstrate how the country could extend health insurance to millions more Americans and at the same time begin to control escalating medical bills that threaten the solvency of families, businesses and the government.

Obama aims to make a "very substantial down payment" toward universal coverage by trimming tax breaks for the wealthy and squeezing payments to insurers, hospitals, doctors and drug manufacturers, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Embedded in the budget figures are key policy changes that the administration argues would improve the quality of care and bring much-needed efficiency to a health system that costs $2.3 trillion a year.

By first identifying a large pot of money to underwrite health-care reform -- before laying out a proposal on who would be covered or how -- Obama hopes to draw Congress to the bargaining table to tackle the details of a comprehensive plan. The strategy is largely intended to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton administration, which crafted an extensive proposal in secret for many months before delivering the finished product to lawmakers, who quickly rejected it.