At the Wonk Room, Elizabeth Edwards gives a very effective rebuttal to John McCain’s claim that she took a cheap shot at his health care plan.  It’s obvious that Mr. McCain is clueless about what allowing insurance companies to cherry-pick customers would to people with pre-existing conditions.

Mrs. Edwards’ expertise with the medical industry comes from personal experience, something that may make the health care issue too personal for her to view objectively.  But she’s right about the negative impact of pre-existing condition clauses in health plans.

…the problem with Sen. McCain’s health care plan is not how it affects us –- but how it affects the tens of millions of Americans with preexisting conditions who, unlike Sen. McCain and myself, do not have the resources to pay for quality health care.

That is not a cheap shot, it is a potentially life and death question for tens of million of Americans.

Melodramatic, perhaps, but not incorrect. 

In my admittedly casual observations, I’ve witnessed families driven to bankruptcy by complicated pregnancies not covered because they were "pre-existing", a close relative suffering through severe pain for an entire year waiting for insurance to cover her, and have personally been afraid to change jobs because of the very real risk of an insurance technicality jeopardizing my family’s financial situation.

As I’ve said before, it frankly makes sense for sicker people to pay more health care dollars than those who are healthy.  But if we assume that a health care insurance system is required - not the case, but assume it anyway because it’s a political, if not an actual, fact - then is makes sense to dilute the risk over the entire population rather than creating two coverage levels for those with pre-existing conditions and those without.

Why?  Because driving down prices at the group level for the have-nots - a good place to be, in this case - will result in higher prices in the "have pre-existing conditions" pool.. For Democrats, at least, this is the opposite of what is desired.

Edwards again:

Insurers will disqualify you for just taking certain medicines because of the possibility of future costs, including common drugs as Lipitor, Zocor, Nexium, and Advair. People who have had cancer are denied coverage and those who get cancer run the risk of simply being dropped by their insurer for any excuse that can be found. And insurers make it a practice to deny coverage to individuals in high risk occupations, such as firefighting, lumber work, telecom installation, and pretty much anything more risky than working in an office.

Also true, which is another reason why we should simply deny insurers the right to cherry-pick customers if we’re going to go down the universal health care road as a nation.

But should we do that?  What exactly is wrong with people simply paying for their health care as they go, assuming their own risk and reaping the rewards if they remain healthy?  It is, after all, not a coincidence that health care costs began to skyrocket after the insurance industry gained a de facto oligopoly in the health care market place.  A system that could be gamed was put into place, then it was gamed.  No surprise.  But the assumption that the health care insurance system is needed at all should be challenged.

John McCain isn’t going to do that, despite his plan’s focus on Americans buying their own health insurance.  Not only does it not cover people with pre-existing conditions, McCain’s plan exacerbates the problem by (now) calling for a "special Medicaid trust fund" to do just that.  Bad and worse.

What none of the candidates have said is that the fundamental problem with health insurance is the lack of competition in the market.  Yes, multiple vendors compete for pools of customers.  But as a consumer you and I have little or no choice about which company gets our health premium dollars or whether the coverage levels they offer are acceptable.  Employers decide, often based on what’s best for the bottom line as much as what’s best for individuals.  Consumers may have the option of the HMO or PPO plan, if they’re lucky, but little else.  Where is the competition?  Where is the choice?

Furthermore, consumers are almost always locked in to their health care choices for a year at a time.  If you’re getting lousy service or the insurer is not meeting their obligations, you’re pretty much out of luck until next year, at which time your choices will likely not be any better, assuming that you’re still working for the same organization.

All of which makes Hillary-Care or the equivalent tempting to people tired of fighting with an incomprehensible system that, at times, seems to have been deliberately designed to prevent quality heath care from being delivered.  It’s the easy solution.  But it’s also the wrong one, as numerous other countries can attest.

What’s needed is more choice, not less.  More options, not fewer.  More competition, not another government-run monopoly. 

As an employee of XYZ Corporation, why does the company limit my health care options?  What does employment have to do with health insurance coverage?  Nothing.  It’s an artificial relationship that needs to be broken as the first step in fixing a flawed system.  While it’s great if an employer wants to subsidize health care, it’s also a disaster when the company’s HR department dictates choices to hundreds or thousands of people.  Employees would be better off with a cash subsidy and the ability to choose their own tailor-made insurance packages.

Insurers wouldn’t like this because they would have to compete harder such an open market.  But it’s this competition that would provide both choice and cost reduction if it were present in the market.

In a competitive market, those with pre-existing conditions must expect to pay more for their insurance.  Naturally, as they tend to use more health care services.  But a competitive market does not allow for exorbitant levels of discrimination, only those warranted by the costs and risks involved.  On the whole, this seems like a better, more fair system than any of those put forth by the leading candidates in the presidential race.

Michelle Malkin notes that rich families are delighted with New Jersey’s S-CHIP program: “People earning as much as $295,000 are enrolled in a state health care program designed for New Jersey’s poor, according to a new audit that found the state failing to check eligibility for all program enrollees.” (more…)

A closer look at Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s health care plans. Which one is better, more effective? (more…)

Good news for people - like my mother - who suffer from ME: “British researchers are close to developing, for the first time, a blood test and potential drug treatments for myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), following groundbreaking work on its genetic origins.” (more…)

Wisconsin Congressman Steve Kagen has what he thinks is a noble goal in mind: ending price discrimination in the medical insurance marketplace. Why? As Kagen writes at the Huffington Post, charging people different prices for health insurance is unconstitutional.

(more…)

Nationalizing health care has a dark side. (more…)

From the NY Times:

Modern medicine can keep people alive into their 9th and 10th decades, when in years past they would have succumbed to any number of conditions. Now a small but growing number of these people are asking why. What is the point of living so long if you can no longer enjoy living? What is the point of living until your mind turns to marshmallow and you are reduced to an existence that is less than human?

(more…)

David Brooks writes about the history of Mrs. Clinton’s heavy-handed tactics in the NY Times.  In 1993, Jim Cooper, a Congressman from Tennessee, had proposed a health care reform plan as a more bipartisan alternative to HillaryCare.  Her response:

But unlike the plan Hillary Clinton came up with then, the Cooper plan did not include employer mandates to force universal coverage.

On June 15, 1993, Cooper met with Clinton to discuss their differences. Clinton was “ice cold” at the meeting, Cooper recalls. “It was the coldest reception of my life. I was excoriated.”

(more…)

For thousands of years, a chimera has been held to be a mythological creature, a beast made up of pieces of other beasts; lion, snake, goat. So when you hear “chimera” you might be more inclined to think of the creature on the left than on the smiling young lady on the right.

Yet the creature on the left is the fruit of a great imagination, while the girl on the right is the real deal, an authentic chimera.

(more…)

Ed Morrissey notes that the media do a stellar job of ignoring the Hillary Clinton Health Care Memos, or “Hillary Papers” as Ed calls them. His conclusion: “The silence from the Fourth Estate is deafening. It screams either cowardice or collaboration.” (more…)

The “Hillary Clinton Health Care Memos” show that the Clintons were willing to destroy everyone in order to push through their health care reforms. (more…)

On today’s PoliGazette talk radio show, I got into a brief debate with Pamela Leavey from Democratic Daily about Democrats’ proposals for universal health care. Pamela argued that universal health coverage would involve costs that are a relatively easy load on individuals and would substantially reduce the current escalation in overall health care costs. During the show and the after-show, I pointed out that universal health care proposals do not take into account may of their secondary costs, including the necessity of rationing and the loss of incentives for investment in research and development upon which all universal health care systems — including those in Canada and Europe beloved by many liberals — ultimately rely.

A column in today’s Wall Street Journal adds some additional points. (more…)

The New York Times reports that the Bush administration is “imposing restrictions on the ability of states to expand eligibility for Medicaid, in an effort to prevent them from offering coverage to families of modest incomes who, the administration argues, may have access to private health insurance.”

These restrictions “mirror those the administration placed on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program in August after states [read: Democrats] tried to broaden eligibility for it as well.” (more…)

Gordon Brown has just shown why it’s wise not to allow the government to get too much involved in health care: once the government is the one who decides on everything, you’ll be severely limited in your freedom to live as you please.

Patients could be required to stop smoking, take exercise or lose weight before they can be treated on the National Health Service, Gordon Brown has suggested. (more…)

Edwards, running a reasonable 3rd in the Democratic primary polls, today published a 4 step program to a healthier America in the Boston Globe.  But would following his recipe really make America a better place to live?

(more…)

It seems that Hillary Clinton has learned from the health care debacle in the 1990s:

As first lady in the early 1990s, she tried to reshape the nation’s health care system — an audacious effort that collapsed under its own complexity, Republican opposition and the Clintons’ unwillingness to seek compromise with lawmakers.

“I still have the scars to show for it,” she tells voters now, promising a more consensus-based approach to health care reform if she is elected president…

Burned by the experience, Sen. Clinton has since adopted what she calls “the school of small steps.”

Aides say her plan will be rolled out through a series of speeches focusing on different aspects of health care reform, with the topic of universal coverage to be tackled last.

She began last month with a speech on reducing health care costs. Among other things, she called for enhanced computerized medical record-keeping and encouraging insurance companies and providers to emphasize prevention of illness, rather than treatment.

Her second address, on improving health care quality, will come later this summer.

Of course, her consensus-based approach does not make her more popular among quite some Democrats. Edwards and Obama have both come up with far more bold proposals “which have been generally praised by activists.”

On the other hand, her approach might mean that she will be able to draw from the different existing plans - use the strong points from the other plans, getting rid of the weak ones - and by doing so, she might be able to come up with the best plan that stands a change of actually succeeding / being approved and implemented.

Mark Steyn on universal health care:

I don’t have much to add to Jonah’s and Iain’s posts, but hey, that’s never stopped me before. So let me just say that I think socialized health care is the single biggest factor in transforming the relationship of the individual to the state. In fact, once it’s introduced it becomes very hard to have genuinely conservative government - certainly, not genuinely small government. I think I say in my book that in Continental cabinets (and in Canada) the Defense ministry is somewhere you pass through en route to a really important portfolio like Health. Election campaigns become devoted to competing pledges about “fixing” health care, even though by definition it never can be.

In a public health care system, the doctors, nurses, janitors and administrators all need to be paid every Friday so the only point at which costs can be controlled is through the patient, by restricting access. If you go to an American doctor with a monstrous lump on your shoulder, it’s in his economic interest to find out what it is and get it whipped off as soon as possible. If you go to a British or Canadian doctor, it’s in the system’s economic interest to postpone it as long as possible. And because the public will only sit around on waiting lists for two or three years, eventually in order to control costs you have to claw it out of other budgets - like Defense. Socialized health care is the biggest cause not just of the infantilization of the citizenry but of the state.

Now, I am a conservative and I am a big opponent of Big Government, but lets not act as if universal health care is the root of all of Europe’s problems. Our health care system needs to be improved, that is for sure, but it is not as bad as Jonah thinks it is. In the end, we do not have citizens who do not receive treatment because they do not have enough money, which I consider to be a good thing.

We have got long waiting lists, that is true, but we are working on them. In the Netherlands, we have just reformed our insurance system, which will help a great deal (more freedom for individual insurance companies, more competition, etc.). As with so many issues, health care requires a balancing act, and neither system is perfect.

Back in January of this year, Keith Olbermann interviewed Senator Hillary Clinton. If you, like I, missed it, here it is (part one before, part two and three after the fold):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp8tOT-EoTw]

Quite a good quote. George W. Bush’s view on bipartisanship: “I think his idea of bipartisanship and mine are pretty different. His idea is, ‘I’m gonna tell you what to do, come and join me’.”
(more…)

It seems that the infant death rate in Mississippi and several other southern states has risen in the last couple of years.

For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.

The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.

“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association.

To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.

Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average.

The best of way of doing something about this problem is economic development. I understand that well meaning progressives automatically will argue that welfare should be raised (again), for instance, but giving people money might solve problems in the short run, but in the long run it makes them dependent on the government and stands in the way of real, lasting progress.

In other words: people in the south have to be encouraged to earn their own money.

The Times (London) reports:

Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again.

In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.

Note that it were their own stem cells. In other words: social conservatives will use this to support their opposition to embryonic stem cell research.

More at The Strata-Sphere, Tim Worstall’s place and Secular Blasphemy.

H/t Memeorandum.