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UK OFFICIALS LIVE LARGE WHILE PATIENTS DIE

I have written here, here, and here about the British government’s cruel policy of refusing to pay for up-to-date cancer drugs because they are “too expensive.” 

And what does the government of Perfidious Albion consider worthy of funding? MailOnline provides a chart showing expenses for which Brit taxpayers must reimburse members of Parliament:

David Catron

My personal favorite is the last item: “Rent on one additional home in London or constituency.” That’s right. The British government refuses to pay for cancer drugs for dying patients, but it pays for the second homes of MPs.

This is what happens when government officials decide how to allocate health care resources.  They always put political or personal considerations ahead of the patients. Always.

Posted 06 July 2008 † Catron § Government BS § NHS BS ‡ Comments (0)

PROGRESSIVE SELF-DELUSION

Ever wonder why Lefties have such difficulty absorbing and correctly interpreting objective data? Well, Ezra Klein inadvertantly provides a hint in his latest piece on Romneycare, which begins thus:

Everyone who looks at the Massachusetts health reform plan sees what they want to see.

What we have here, of course, is a textbook case of projection. It isn’t “everyone” who “sees what they want to see” in Masachusetts. It is only “progressives” like Klein who have that problem.

This is why they cannot absorb the blindingly obvious fact that the Massachusetts health care reform initiative is a failure. Klein’s delusional assessment of the program is a case in point:

Did it succeed? We don’t know yet. The plan has a three-year implementation process and we’re about halfway through. The early evidence suggests that the plan is on track to achieve its goals.

In reality, the “early evidence” shows precisely the opposite. As the WSJ recently put it, the plan is the new “Big Dig,” an apt allusion to Boston’s famously over budget and ineptly executed road repair project.

What Klein and his fellow travelers don’t “want to see” is that the Massachusetts program has failed to accomplish its most basic goal, universal coverage, and its budget is already out of control.

So, it is indeed true that some people have a singular capacity for self-delusion. These people lately refer to themselves as “progressives.”

Posted 03 July 2008 † Catron § Journalistic BS § Reform BS § Universal BS ‡ Comments (2)

MEDICARE ADVANTAGE CUT: PATIENTS SAY NO

While the AMA pressures Republican senators to acquiesce in the Democrat attempt to euthanize MA, it might be useful to look at the attitude of the actual patients (remember them?) . 

As it happens, a survey conducted by Ayres, McHenry & Associates shows that Medicare beneficiaries  are overwhelmingly against cutting funds to the Medicare Advantage program:

Seniors disapprove of cutting payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients. But they disapprove even more strongly of cutting Medicare Advantage …

Obviously, this sentiment is strongest among enrollees in the Medicare Advantage program. But it is also shared by seniors with traditional Medicare:

More than half of seniors in traditional Medicare, think cutting Medicare Advantage will have a negative effect on enrollees.

Why do they believe this? Because they know that Medicare Advantage offers additional benefits that will disappear if the Democrats are successful in killing the program.

And, make no mistake about it, killing the MA program is precisely what the Democrats want to do.

Posted 02 July 2008 † Catron § Medicare BS § Political BS ‡ Comments (0)

MANDATE MADNESS

As I pointed out last week, state-mandated insurance benefits are an important contributor to health care inflation. Such mandates have also increased the ranks of the uninsured.

There is a glimmer of hope, however, in a piece of legislation introduced by Congressman Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska. Today’s American Spectator contains my article on mandate madness and the Fortenberry legislation.

Posted 02 July 2008 † Catron § Insurance BS § Reform BS ‡ Comments (0)

PUBLIC OPINION & GOV’T HEALTH CARE

Single-payer advocates are always telling us that Americans have become so tired of our “dysfunctional health care system” that we yearn for the government to take it over and fix it.

If that conflicts with what your gut tells you about the American psyche, listen to your innards. According to Gallup, half of us think the government already meddles too much. Gallup asked the following question:

Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and business. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?

And here’s the response:

Americans more likely to believe government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses (50%) as opposed to saying government should do more to solve the country’s problems (43%).

David Catron

This result begs the following question: If the general public already thinks the government “helps” too much, is it plausible that a majority of Americans want the feds to take over health care?

I think not.

Posted 01 July 2008 † Catron § Reform BS § Statistical BS ‡ Comments (2)

MEDICARE-FOR-ALL: A PREVIEW

A variety of Democrats and advocacy groups have been telling us for years that “Medicare-for-All” is the cure for what ails U.S. health care. Well, Congress has just demonstrated why that’s such a dumb idea. Donald Johnson over at The Health Care Blog spells it out:

Under a “universal health insurance system,” which is advocated by the Democrats, political fights like this would happen every year. Doctors and insurers, if they were still in business, would face payment cuts. Patients would face uncertainty about who their doctors and insurers would be. And relationships between doctors, insurers and patients would become more strained than some of them already are.

The kind of political skullduggery that I describe here will be much MUCH worse if the whole health care system is turned over the the federal government. Government-run health care is politicized health care.

 [HT Kevin,MD]

Posted 30 June 2008 † Catron § Government BS § Medicare BS § Single-Payer BS ‡ Comments (1)

MEDICARE ADVANTAGE & PHYSICIAN CUTS

Congressional Democrats, worried that market-based health care reform is actually working, have been doing their best to throttle Medicare Advantage in the cradle. 

Last year, abetted by ”experts” who made the disingenuous claim that we had to choose between ”the kids” and the insurance companies, the Dems tried to use SCHIP expansion as a pretext for killing MA.

When their SCHIP scam failed, they floundered around for a while but eventually came up with their latest load of BS—that we have to choose between MA and adequate physcian reimbursement.

This theme has been picked up by the usual partisan hacks and even a few medical bloggers who normally don’t fall for this stuff. However, like the SCHIP gambit, the “MA versus the docs” meme is based on a canard.

The party line on MA is that it is vastly more expensive than traditional Medicare.  This is based on bogus studies by the Commonwealth Fund, et al. The Galen Institute provides the following reality check:

CMS estimates that if one is only measuring the equivalent cost of delivering Part A and B services alone, MA plans are paid 2.8 percent more than the cost of traditional Medicare.

This is a far cry from the 12% figure routinely promulgated by the “news” media and allegedly non-partisan policy wonks. Either way, it has nothing to do with physician reimbursement cuts by Medicare.

The Democrats have attached the MA controversy to the physician pay issue in a transparent (and apparently successful) attempt to co-opt the AMA in their ongoing plot to kill market-based Medicare reform.

Meanwhile, MA is wildly popular with minority and low-income seniors because of its lower co-pays and the increased primary care access that the program provides in rural and other underserved areas.

The Democrats want to slash MA funding for reasons having nothing to do with physician pay or insurance company profits. They want to kill Medicare Advantage because it is working.

Posted 29 June 2008 † Catron § Medicare BS ‡ Comments (1)

CANADA’S HEALTH SYSTEM DISSED BY ITS DAD

Claude Castonguay is known as “the father of Quebec Medicare.” However, as David Gratzer points out in IBD, Castonguay can be more accurately described as the “father” of the Canadian single-payer system:

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec adopt government-administered health care … Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Now, however, Dad is not happy with the way his child turned out:

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.”

And how does Castonguay propose to get Canadian health care back on track?

We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.

That’s right. While our leading politicians advocate turning more and more of U.S. health care over to the government, the father of Canadian health care is advocating less government involvement. Which prompts Gratzer to ask:

If Claude Castonguay is abandoning ship, why should Americans bother climbing on board?

Why indeed.

Posted 26 June 2008 † Catron § Canadian BS ‡ Comments (4)

NHS DENIES TREATMENT, PATIENT KILLS SELF

Another happy ending for the bureaucrats who run Britain’s system of socialized medicine. Per the Telegraph:

A cancer sufferer killed himself the day after he was denied a new drug on the NHS.

Albert Baxter’s primary care trust wouldn’t pay for the drug Sutent, which constituted his only real hope, so he went home and suffocated himself with a plastic trash bag.

Now the apparatchiks won’t have to worry about how much this patient is costing the system. And to think some people say government-run health care isn’t efficient. 

Posted 25 June 2008 † Catron § NHS BS ‡ Comments (5)

MEDICARE’S ALLEGEDLY LOW ADMIN COSTS

Advocates of government-run health care are always telling us that administrative costs are somehow lower for Medicare than for private insurance. But they never explain precisely how Medicare manages to operate on such miraculously low admin costs. Scott Gottlieb provides the answer in the WSJ:

It passes costs for that on to the broader health-care system by backing up its rules with the threat of costly civil and even criminal sanctions. Providers and medical product developers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on systems, personnel and paperwork to ensure compliance with Medicare’s sticky morass of regulations – tasks made more expensive by the fuzziness of the program’s regulations and the arbitrary way they are enforced.

In other words, Medicare achieves its “lower” admin costs utilizing the classic bureaucratic tactic of cost-shifting. In reality, Medicare’s true admin costs are higher that those of the private health care industry. But Medicare can use the power of the federal government to force someone else (providers and patients) to pay them. 

Posted 24 June 2008 † Catron § Medicare BS ‡ Comments (0)