June 19, 2009
This approach actually works... So of course Dems are not interested...
Greg Scandlen, More choice for consumers is always healthy - BostonHerald.com:
...Meanwhile there is an approach that has proven to work after six years of testing by millions of people nationwide. Consumer-driven health (CDH) plans empower individuals by taking money away from third-party payers and putting it in the hands of consumers to spend as they wish.
Now that one out of five Americans under age 65 is paying some of his or her own bills through health savings accounts (HSA), high deductible plans and similar consumer-driven plans, policymakers are beginning to see a profound effect on the service side of the ledger. Consumer-driven health (CDH) plans cost 25 percent to 40 percent less than preferred provider organizations (PPO) and health maintenance organizations (HMO), and their rate of annual cost increases is one-third of that of the two other plans.
It isn't just vendors with a vested interest that are capturing these results. Last fall the Kaiser Family Foundation found the average family premium for an HMO totaled $13,100 while an HSA cost only $9,100. The premiums for CDHs at WellPoint and Cigna actually fell over a two-year period, while premiums for their HMOs and PPOs rose about 10 percent.
Costs for CDH plans are falling because people are becoming more invested in their own health - something policymakers have long been trying to achieve without success. Consumers with a CDH participate in wellness/prevention programs at a higher rate than others, and they choose generic drugs over name brands, avoid using emergency rooms in favor of retail clinics or their own doctor, and comply better with recommended treatment programs.
By any measure, CDH is a success, confirmed last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It found 20 percent of the under-65 population is now in some version of a CDH.
So, why isn't Orszag jumping for joy? His hope for a more efficient, better quality health care system that actually lowers costs is being realized right before his eyes. He either is not paying attention or he prefers to hope for complicated, government remedies that may never work....
Of course he does. Dems want to run the circus, and are only interested in "solutions" that involve bigger government.
Well, thank you Republicans, for getting HSA's passed after decades of Democrat obstruction. And thank you George W. Bush!
Posted by John Weidner at June 19, 2009 03:51 PMOK – this is a good example to expand on AOG’s comments from a few posts back on causality. Here are my nascent thoughts on the matter.
There are a number of things that Democrats desperately want to believe. It’s part of what it means to be a Democrat, and thus a real part of their identity, which people do not give up easily.
They very much want to believe that the UN can be effective; that “smart” diplomacy can work, even with dictators; that government planning can solve real people’s problems; I could go on, but most readers here get the point. The problem is that there is scant evidence for much of the things they want to believe. Deep down, I think they know this. Thus they act as if their beliefs are self-evident truths not requiring any evidence. Thus causality is simply not seriously considered.
We must help the poor. Analyzing a given program to see if it actually is helping the poor is actually dangerous. Of course it is the government’s role to ensure universal education – that goes without saying to the liberal mind. Analyzing the benefits of private schools or vouchers is a non-starter. What if the evidence shows they actually work? The same could be said of health care initiatives. Bjorn Lomborg, clearly a passionate environmentalist, proposed a serious examination of how to most effectively spend limited resources in order to get the “biggest bang for the buck” for government programs. He is now a pariah on the Left, because the clear implication of his proposal is that some environmental efforts are less worthy than others.
Causality is being willfully denied by the Left. Most conservatives I know are hard-wired to try to identify causality, and act accordingly. This is why we get so frustrated trying to engage in debate with the Left. We’re not even in the same ballpark – hell we’re not even playing the same sport!
OEQy6F comment1 ,
Posted by: Owbxwfvk at June 24, 2009 10:27 AM
