*Robert Samuelson Is Getting Exasperated With Obama: *Samuelson shows
that exasperation in this column
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/14/AR2010031401389.html>,
where Samuelson accuses Obama of peddling simplicities and distortions.
Samuelson ends with these three paragraphs:
Unless we change the fee-for-service system, costs will remain hard
to control because providers are paid more for doing more. Obama
might have attempted that by proposing health-care vouchers (limited
amounts to be spent on insurance), which would force a restructuring
of delivery systems to compete on quality and cost. Doctors,
hospitals and drug companies would have to reorganize care. Obama
refrained from that fight and instead cast insurance companies as
the villains.
He's telling people what they want to hear, not what they need to
know. Whatever their sins, insurers are mainly intermediaries; they
pass along the costs of the delivery system. In 2009, the largest
14 insurers had profits of roughly $9 billion; that approached 0.4
percent of total health spending of $2.472 trillion. This hardly
explains high health costs. What people need to know is that
Obama's plan evades health care's major problems and would worsen
the budget outlook. It's a big new spending program when government
hasn't paid for the spending programs it already has.
"If not now, when? If not us, who?" Obama asks. The answer is:
It's not now, and it's not "us." Pass or not, Obama's proposal is
the illusion of "reform," not the real thing.
And the provisions that Pelosi and company are cooking up in secret may
make it even worse.
(Samuelson's colleague at the Post, Fred Hiatt, should study this column
to see if he can find any evidence that Obama has formulated a rational
solution to our complex problems of health insurance.)
- 10:34 AM, 16 March 2010 [link]
<http://www.seanet.com/%7Ejimxc/Politics/March2010_2.html#jrm8486>
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